By Peter Pavarini
“Are we there yet?” is the phrase kids use to express they are tired of traveling (usually in a car) and ready to move around and play. So, the phrase represents the frustrations of traveling families with restless children. https://forum.wordreference.com
Applying this meme to today, it seems the whole world is itching for war. Just this past week, upon the sinking of the Russian naval vessel Moskva, the Russian state media declared that World War III had already begun. But to be fair, just weeks earlier, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky had predicted Russia’s invasion of his country would lead to a full-scale global war.
Not to be outdone by such trash talk, the Biden administration has also weighed in. Shortly after Russia’s “special military operation” began in February, President Biden mentioned World War III four times in a single day. Of course, that was likely scripted by White House staff to maximize the public’s distraction from other politically damaging issues (e.g., rampant inflation, open borders, crime and a failed COVID response). But even “experts” like former senior national security advisor (and rabid Trump-hater) Fiona Hill have warned us that Russian president Vladmir Putin is preparing to use nuclear weapons to trigger WWIII.
Preparing for Total War
After destroying what little trust Americans have in their government, the corporate media – both on the Left and the Right – have been working 24/7 to prepare us for what they see as the ultimate news story – TOTAL WAR.[i]
Gone are the days when those not privy to classified information were given a head’s up before sending our sons and daughters to die on some foreign battlefield. Constitutionally, an act of Congress is required to initiate war against a foreign country[ii]. But it has been over 80 years since that has been done. Since 1945, when the concept of “war” in international law changed, America’s military incursions into Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, to name a few, have all been authorized by other means. Formal declarations of war have fallen out of favor. In this sense, the use of nuclear weapons at the end of World War II – the “war to end all wars” – proved extremely successful.
The concept of total war is attributed to 19th-century Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz, who denied that wars could be fought according to international law. He rejected the limited objectives of 18th-century warfare in which winning a specific military victory was only necessary to give the victor a diplomatic bargaining advantage. Instead, Clausewitz stressed the importance of completely crushing the adversary’s forces in battle. [iii]
The Instruments of Modern Warfare
Clausewitz could not have imagined the instruments of warfare available to us in the Twenty-First Century. The way gunpowder revolutionized the way wars were fought after the Fourteenth Century, weapons of mass destruction introduced in the last century (e.g., nuclear, biological, cyber) have made war no longer a “rational instrument” of foreign policy, but an “act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.”[iv] Couple that with various forms of non-kinetic warfare, such as psyops[v] targeting civilians and cyber-attacks on business, financial institutions, power grids and communications, modern warfare has the potential of destroying a society without tanks, aircraft or ground troops.
Which brings us to the greatest danger facing America today. It’s not Ukraine or any foreign conflict. It’s the civil war brewing in our own homeland. The definition of civil war has not changed. It remains what it was in the Nineteenth Century: a war in which parties within the same culture, society or nationality fight against each other for control of the political power. A civil war may also be considered a revolution when a major societal restructuring is the likely outcome. I’ve previously written about the possibility of a second American civil war[vi] but have always hoped that one could be avoided.
I no longer have that hope.
The Second American Civil War
Scholars[vii] generally use two criteria to determine whether political strife has gone from being a rhetorical war to a kinetic war. First, the warring groups must be from the same country and fighting for control of the political center in order to force a major change in policy. Over the past decade, perhaps since the election of Obama, the level of animosity between the political Left and Right has certainly crossed that threshold. The second criterion involves bloodshed. At least 1,000 people must be killed, with a minimum of 100 from each side. Other scholars consider that casualty number too low and prefer a minimum of 1,000 people killed annually during the conflict.
Some would say the US is nowhere near experiencing 1,000 deaths annually from political strife. Maybe so, but with homicides rising 30% to a total of 21,570 in 2020, it’s easy to conclude that at least 5% of those deaths were a by-product of the controversies surrounding our ideological differences.[viii] Even if we haven’t mathematically reached that point yet, certain events like the George Floyd riots of 2020 and the Stop the Steal protests at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 have the look and feel of historic events that touched off outright wars in the past. The direct involvement (or in the case of the George Floyd riots, the non-involvement) of law enforcement personnel, National Guard troops and other government agents takes these incidents from the realm of ordinary criminal activity and places them squarely in the category of political uprising.
Add to these events, the Defund the Police movement and the systematic effort by Progressive prosecutors, judges and other government officials to dramatically reduce bail requirements and penalties, anything that might have been routine crime in the past now becomes a political act.
Everyone Is in This Fight
No matter which side of the political divide you are on, or even if you consider yourself unaligned or apathetic, don’t fool yourself. You are in this fight. As Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians:
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
Ephesians 6:12
Signs of Spiritual Warfare
Satan uses our minds as battlefields to wage war against us. His favorite tactic is to tell lies and convey them so convincingly (based on the “science” of course) that we readily accept them as truth. Another strategy is to present us with the worse-case scenario to instill fear in us. Having just lived through two years of COVID hysteria, an exaggerated fear of that illness and the possibility of death has proven to be an extraordinarily effective way to terrify people and instill in them profound hopelessness and dependency.
Like it or not, we’re all caught up in the spiritual war taking place between good and evil. We cannot simply exempt ourselves from that battle by claiming to be woke, anti-racist, tolerant of people’s differences or just by “being nice” to other people. In fact, by staying on the sidelines we become more vulnerable to the power of evil seeping into every aspect of our lives. At this point, everyone needs to choose sides.
A Clear Choice
For me, that choice is clear. While no political party has a monopoly on virtue, I know when I’m being lied to. When one side is hell bent on suppressing free speech, I can be fairly certain that’s the side that doesn’t want me to think for myself. When that side resorts to attacking my personal character instead of debating the issues, I find it hard to believe their viewpoint is grounded in truth. When anyone tells me not to believe “my own lying eyes”, I need to step back and wonder whether that person is in the grips of a very powerful delusion.
Knowing How This War Will End
Fortunately, because of my faith, I know how this war will end. Like the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, I am prepared to sacrifice my life, my fortune and my sacred honor to preserve and protect the God-given freedoms upon which our nation was founded. Those who say they would flee the United States if it were invaded as Ukraine has been[ix] sadly do not have that assurance.
[i] Brett Stephens, “This Is How World War III Begins”, New York Times, March 15, 2022.
[ii] U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8.
[iii] https://www.britannica.com/
[iv] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book I – On the Nature of War, Chapter 1, Princeton University Press (1989).
[v] “The Left’s Go-To Strategy: Psyoping Americans”, www.alessandrocamp.com (July 26, 2021).
[vi] E.g., “Both Sides Can’t Be Right”, www.alessandrocamp.com (April 27, 2021); “America on Borrowed Time” (September 1, 2021).
[vii] See Faustin Ntoubandi, “Noninternational Armed Conflict (“Civil War”), www.oxfordbibliographies.com, April 22, 2020.
[viii] Lois Beckett, “US Records Largest Annual Increase in Murders in Six Decades”, The Guardian, September 27, 2021.
[ix] A majority of Republicans and independents said they would stay and fight were Russia to invade the US, while a majority of Democrats said they would flee, according to a Quinnipiac poll. Quinnipiac University Poll, March 7, 2022. www.poll.edu.
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