Where the hell do we go from here? This will sound odd coming from a professional mediator and Buddhist, but sometimes an overt conflict, even a war, is the best solution to otherwise-intractable conflict. Think of couples who constantly bicker, and the peace they can find if they divorce. Or two companies arguing over ownership of an idea, and how a verdict can settle the matter. Or think of the U.S. Civil War: the nation was founded on slavery, it couldn't progress without ending slavery, the South needed economically not only to preserve but to extend slavery, and (given the Constitution's federalist/dual sovereigns structure and the power advantage given the South by the structure of the Senate and Electoral College), there was no way the issue could be resolved politically. The Civil War was terrible, but it also ended slavery, allowed the "Second Founding" to radically redraw the Constitution (the 14th Amendment is *everything*, people!), and basically restructured America in a way that laid the foundation for the entire 20th century Western liberal world order. In other words, sometimes unthinkable "wars" (literal or figurative) are healthier than festering conflicts. Someone wins, someone loses, but it's over and everyone can move forward. What's unsettling to me about the recent Speakership debacle is that, unlike the previous ones outlined so clearly by @[email protected] above, there are no great policy debates or clear geographic constituencies underlying it – which suggests that no cataclysmic but simple convulsion like a civil war can resolve our divisions. Honest question: how can a society resolve a conflict that has no principled ideological basis, that is fought not in Kansas but on Facebook, against people who live among us and from whom it's therefore impossible to secede? Will we simply hobble on like this forever, with power alternating between one party trying to do good and the other party basically mumbling to itself and wringing soup out of its beard, with half the populace unable to see the difference and the other half unable to do anything about it because of gerrymandering and the anti-democratic structure of the Senate and Electoral College? I can't see the endgame here; nor can I see the cataclysmic upheaval that might upset the board and let us start a new game. So where the hell did we go from here?
It sure sounds like these nihilists are actually anarchists, since they don’t believe they’re committing crimes — especially because they are not being punished for them.
See: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/dermot-sreenan-crime-and-punishment-an-anarchist-view
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