New movie predicts upcoming American civil war

“Nineteen states have seceded.”

That’s not a line from the latest “breaking news” headline (at least, not yet) but the opening line from the upcoming thriller, “Civil War.”

“Nineteen states?” you might be wondering. “I thought only 11 states seceded in the American Civil War?”

You would be correct. But film studio A24’s forthcoming flick isn’t about Abraham Lincoln or the Confederates. Not that civil war.

Instead, it’s about the civil war everyone seems to be talking about today — a civil war that hasn’t happened, a nightmare, “what-if” scenario that increasingly does not sound too far-fetched to believe.

Tragically, as anyone who’s been attuned to American politics over the past few years knows, talk of a new civil war has become uncomfortably commonplace in our political dialogue.

“Is America headed for another Civil War?” The New York Times wondered last year. “America is divided and battling many different internal “wars” — over politics, culture, language, religion. Is it possible all this internal division could culminate in a civil war?” According to at least one poll, 40 percent of Americans think so. “More than two-fifths of Americans believe civil war is at least somewhat likely in the next 10 years,” The Guardian reports. This data coincides with another report exposing surging support for political violence.

If ever there was a time to make a movie capitalizing on American audiences’ fear of civil war, this is it.

But “Civil War” raised a few eyebrows in its first trailer. While the concept of a modern-day civil war is, sadly, far too believable, the battlelines in filmmaker Alex Garland’s rendering of that war have been criticized as implausible. The Ringer put it this way: “Sure, a second civil war is conceivable, and yes, that’s quite concerning. But one aspect of the trailer is harder to swallow than the concept of civil war itself: the part where the president refers to ‘the so-called Western Forces of Texas and California.’”

Seemingly, Texas and California, which are typically seen as existing on opposite extremes of the American political spectrum, have set aside their differences to fight alongside each other in the upcoming film. But audiences aren’t buying it.

Nevertheless, despite this rather large point of implausibility, the rest of the trailer is terrifying simply for how conceivable it is. In the end, it doesn’t really matter how the war would shake out or how the states would fall — a second civil war would be devastating to our country no matter what, and that’s exactly why we need an Article V convention of states.

In reality, — Alex Garland’s fanciful depiction of a Texas-California alliance aside — many of the states in the American “Union” are irreconcilably unalike. And that's OK. The Founders intentionally designed a federalist system of government to allow for wild inconsistencies between the states. That’s not the problem. 

The problem is when Americans cannot even agree on at least a few fundamental truths about the country (including, for example, the centrality of federalism) and instead wield the federal government as an enforcer of their particular agendas. As hard as it is for us to admit, we, as Americans, will never agree on everything. But for as long the federal government remains a threat to half the country, tensions will continue to climb.

If we wish to avoid another civil war (which we certainly all should), we would be wise to call an Article V convention, by which we can shrink the federal government and restore federalism. While the path to war seems alarmingly plausible to many Americans, we are blessed to have the Founders’ constitutional safeguard at our disposal. We must exhaust every option (besides war) to save our Republic and preserve the Union — and that includes calling an Article V convention.

Learn more here. To show your support for the movement, please add your name to the petition below.

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