To Head Off Your Freak-Out about a Second American Civil War (the movie and/or the real thing)
Yeah, there's going to be a movie. In four weeks. Buckle up.
Cassidy Steele Dale writes to equip you with the forecasts, foresight skills and perspectives, and tools you may need to create a better, kinder world.
And one of those ways is to head off your next freak-out. Which may start later today.
OK gang, the independent film studio A24 — the rightly-warped minds behind Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Green Knight, The Zone of Interest, and the TV series Euphoria — will release their next movie Civil War, about a very-near-future Second American Civil War, this April 12 but their premiere showing of the film will be tonight (March 14) at South by Southwest. (Scary trailers at the end of this. Stay tuned.)
I don’t know how long the press embargo will be but the public-and-news-media freakout about it will probably start mere minutes after viewers finish crapping their pants and get out into the parking lot and onto their phones. And after they mass-text-and-post they may put their foreheads down onto the cold pavement and try to be quiet for a while. So, you know, maybe 9 or 10pm EDT. Or so.
So I’m going to try to get ahead of it to cut your next panic off at the knees. Even though I haven’t seen the movie yet and I’m just guessing about what’s in it… but I’m a professional futurist which means I am sometimes a very good guesser.
So if you yourself have just gotten out into the pants-crapping parking lot (Lot D) outside the theater — or if you just want to know — here are my guesses:
Civil War is not a forecast. It’s not a prediction. It’s an illustration of what could be. It’s a warning. It’s a modern day version of Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, which is about a civil war that erupts in the wake of the election of an American version of Adolf Hitler who commits a self-coup to remain in power and creates an American totalitarian regime in the name of patriotism and “traditional” American values. (Will I speculate upon Sinclair Lewis’ credentials as a visionary and futurist on this point? No, I will not but… dude.) Lewis’ agenda for that novel was to scare the ever-living shit out of Americans by illustrating to them the dangers and horrors and ramifications of siding with a fascist. Because of course It. Can. Happen. Here. His goal was to make his readers go out to pre-World-War-II pants-crapping Parking Lot D to keep any Americans from siding with Actual Hitler. Because some of them were going to. And did. Right up until they saw what Actual Hitler Actually did a few years later when he got Actual power and his guys got control of lots of Actual guns. And committed an Actual Holocaust. And tried to conquer the world.
For confirmation of this later I’ll see if the character names in Civil War line up with those in It Can’t Happen Here.
A24 as a studio tends toward movies about ideas that invoke (a) deep thought and (b) deeply disturbing horror. So Civil War-as-It-Can’t-Happen-Here would be very on brand.
Stop trying to make the “sides” in Civil War to make sense. They don’t and won’t. The “sides” are meant to be nonsense. Why? Because (a) what the sides ARE isn’t important to movie’s point; the mere fact that there ARE sides and that there IS a civil war of any kind IS the point, and (b) the filmmakers don’t want you to reeeeeeally be able to figure out who you would side with in the movie. The “sides” won’t map to real life in any way. Why? Because the warring sides in the civil war in the movie probably will only be between bad guys and less-bad guys. There may be no good heroic Americans in the movie at all — only reflections of what competing mirror-images of American heroism may hath wrought. (Which is gonna bother some faraway-distantly-noble-trumpet-sounding-military-idolizing-Americans. Deeply.) That’s why the main characters — the “heroes” of the movie — probably will be the ones caught in the middle. The everyman witnesses to the madness; the last sane people in a mad world. So they’ll be journalists. Real ones. Because of course they would. Because of course they would.
The movie will probably be constructed as a dystopian road movie. That means it will be made up of a series of disturbing vignettes strung together with a single through-line, in this case a faction’s slow military approach on Washington, DC. This means that what haunts you when you go home won’t necessarily be the end of the movie, it may be some scene in the middle that just won’t let you go. That’s the movie’s job: to grab you from eighteen different angles so that any single of them will catch you from the side and will righteously scare you into screaming at every next angry armed man in the world — and every complacent idiot — STOP NOW BEFORE YOU DAMN US ALL WITH YOUR “HEROISM” AND/OR YOUR COMPLACENCY.
No, this movie will not inspire violence. Why not? Because the movie is about undercutting that and will depict aspiring violence-makers as nitwits rather than heroes. Why else not? Because the dumbasses who want and are preparing for another civil war do not watch A24 movies; they watch Michael Bay movies. Important Side Point: insurgencies more often start in the wake of military incursions and major totalitarian movements and succeed (or simply last) when they have a chance to outwit and out-move outsider-strangers. They do far less well when they’re up against other locals who know their terrain, their cousins, and their mamas. This means that Cleetus and the Mayonnaise Militia won’t be able to militarily outmaneuver the Lizard Lick, North Carolina Volunteer Fire Department for more than a week much less a detective-and-a-half from the Lizard Lick Police Department no matter how many Michael Bay movies they watch. (Don’t believe me, Cleetus? Antifa’s Special-Snowflake-Gubmint-Ninja-Forces-That-Don’t-Actually-Exist ain’t going to try to militarily engage you in the woods near your house; a crack team of three uniformed cops are going to lie in wait for you in the dairy section at Walmart and surprise you just when you think you’re safe because they are not stupid. And they’re going to be armed only with 9-millimeter pistols with the safeties on, a warrant, and gumption. Which means that — for you — they will be over-armed and over-witted. Will they side with you — no matter whether they semi-somewhat-maybe agree with you? No they will not because every cop in the country despite everything sees themselves as officers of the peace, not officers of the crazy. No matter who you are.) So everybody settle down and take a deep breath.
But again: I’m just guessing. I’ll go see Civil War during its opening weekend along with the rest of us. And you should see it, too. And I’ll tell you what I think afterward ASAP. And I may be wrong about all of this. But I’m probably not.
But if I am I’ll meet you in Lot D.