Stephen Marche warns in his book The Next Civil War that the United States is dangerously close to political violence. Dozens of experts were interviewed for the book, and their predictions were like something out of a science fiction novel.
Marche says in Episode 512 of the Guide to the GALAXY that he thought of it asdystopian realism at the time. You don't have to make it up. I will give you the best models and show you what they look like, and that is enough to be going on with.
Future scenarios are presented in the book. In another, there is fighting between local law enforcement and the military. refugees flee a devastated New York City in the wake of a massive superstorm The Day After is a piece of fiction written for Congress about a nuclear attack on Lawrence, Kansas.
Civil war fiction is very popular. Most of these stories appeal to survivalists and preppers. They imagine a place like the Wild West, where you are on your own, and you need to garden for yourself, and you need to arm yourself, and you need to run away from groups of bandits. The political far right is engaged in fantasy.
Marche says that the warnings about the future have a place, but that our culture may have gone too far when it comes to producing dystopian fiction. He is considering a book that is more upbeat for his next book.
The complete interview with Stephen Marche can be found in Episode 512 of Guide to the GALAXY. Check out the highlights from the discussion.
Stephen Marche is the author of The Hunger of the Wolf.
I was a big fan of wolves. In my PhD, I did some work on various magical transformations that I saw in the werewolf stuff. I knew a bit about the history of werewolves, but the book was more important to me. It goes back all the way through time in every culture. There are different versions of werewolves in Japan, Canada and Africa, but they don't turn into wolves, but they turn into dogs. It is a general story that is out there and fits in with something that is really general to the human condition.
Stephen Marche was on civil war.
The US military command is built around a chain of command that is tied in to the US Constitution, and when civil order breaks down, the military will make a choice as a unit, and someone will be in charge of the US military. Generals will leave, but they won't take any forces with them. You will have paramilitary units who don't feel like the government is a legitimate government and they are freedom fighters. This is what happens in civil war. The military doesn't break into two sides like in the first Civil War. There are a lot of people outside the military who don't think the military is legitimate and take violence into their own hands.
Stephen Marche was on the topic of secession.
I look for solutions at the end of the book, and I think that the United States could use more reasonable solutions. When marriages get to the state that America is in, you just sit the kids down and say, "It's time for a divorce." That's the civilized solution. It's not impossible, but certainly unconstitutional, and also requires a huge amount of international negotiation. I think we are reaching a point, particularly with the incipient abortion decision, where you are basically going to have two different countries. They don't share a lot.
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