He can and has.) Can he present an account of our difficulties that nevertheless is balanced and fair? His alliance at times colors his analysis, and I confess that I sometimes do not find his comments helpful but he is intelligent and perceptive. (I say this despite his suggestion that as a Canadian, he does not have to choose sides. On the one hand he writes as an uninvolved analyst, and in doing so he has consulted a substantial number of experts in various fields but on the other hand, he is firmly committed to one of the sides, that of the progressive Democrats. In writing about these conflicts in our politics, Marche has set himself a difficult task, one that I do not think he has altogether succeeded in accomplishing. In the eyes of the expert class and ordinary American alike, the odds of a civil war in the near future are about the same as drawing a ten or higher in a pack of cards” (pp. The United States is descending into the kind of sectarian conflict usually found in poor countries with histories of violence, not the world’s most enduring democracy and largest economy…. He characterizes the split in our politics in this way: “The United States is coming to an end…. Marche, who is a novelist as well as a journalist, vividly depicts these crises through stories about them. Marche in four “dispatches” describes four possible crisis situations that could lead to civil war: a conflict between local forces who no longer recognize federal authority and troops sent from Washington to disarm them the assassination of a president the destruction of New York City in a flood and the outbreak of massive violence owing to terrorism and counterinsurgency measures that arouse resistance. Marche’s forecast is not altogether a grim one, however if secession can be peacefully arranged, it has considerable advantages over today’s discord. We are no longer a united country, and the political split between progressive Democrats and right-wing Republicans has widened to an extent similar to that between North and South before the first Civil War. America may be headed toward a civil war. In this important book, Stephen Marche has disquieting news for us. The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future
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