Americans, turn back from this post-2016 election civil war

{mosads}Our media, fed by the pollsters, were consumed with analysis after analysis by the commensurate political expert, all too eager to predict outcomes. The statistical data from past elections and the demographics of the present were presented in minute detail as harbingers of future electoral outcomes. 

Each faction was content to be directed to their desired conclusion by their favored media outlet.   

The two main choices were clear and we moved from the speculation of the presidential campaign into the reality of voting by the people.

The voting was accomplished and the media presented the results as they were reported from the election districts with all the excitement that rivaled any race track announcer. Finally after all the campaigning, the TV ads, the debates and the endless polls the people made a choice. 

Although some were surprised, some were relieved, and some were disappointed by the results, we could count on the media and those same political experts to speculate in detail about the reasons for the outcome.

But the results were not all in keeping with the predetermined desired conclusions by many. This has resulted in disappointment, protests, assassination threats and violence. 

However, this is not the first election that has resulted in controversy in such a deeply divided nation.

Here are some comments about one previous presidential campaign season and election results in mid-1800: 

John Garraty in his book “American Nation” provides a quote from David Donald’s “Charles Summer and the Coming Civil War” (1960):

“Issues were becoming emotionalized… Slogans were reducing public sentiment to stereotyped patterns; social psychology was approaching a hair-trigger instability.”

Garraty further quotes C. Van Woodward from his essay on John Brown:

“Paranoia continued to induce counter-paranoia, each antagonist infecting the other reciprocally…” 

The Richmond Dispatch on Thursday Nov. 8, 1860, editorializes:

“The event is the most deplorable one that has happened in the history of the country. The Union may be preserved in spite of it. We think it will; but we are prepared to expect trouble.”

The Courier out of New Orleans reported on Friday Nov. 9, 1860:

“The election of Abraham Lincoln to the chief magistracy of the country by the hordes of fanatics … who have been flocking to his standards since the opening of the Presidential canvass.”

This suspicion festered by media hype in the nineteenth century only served to heighten the divisions that shredded the country apart. The ensuing Civil War resulted in the bloodiest conflict in the history of this country.

Now before us we again have a divided nation that just completed a presidential campaign and election cycle. This has done very little to heal the divisions, very little to assuage the paranoia, very little to end the political blame game. In more parallels with the 1860’s we even have calls for states to secede from the United States, the Union!

Does this portend the inability of current politics that knows no compromise, that knows no civil discourse, that only sees a way forward confined with blinders? 

Abraham Lincoln in his 1860 address at Cooper Union in New York warned against such an attitude:

“Your purpose then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, in all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.” 

But I would like to also temper the paranoia — the calls for swift action and the violence — with the words of Abraham Lincoln from his first inaugural address:

“Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it?”

Indeed, the prize of violence and division is certainly not a prize at all. 

DeMaggio is a retired special agent in charge, and a retired captain in the U.S. Navy. The above is the opinion of the author and is not meant to reflect the opinion of the U.S. Navy or the U.S. government.

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