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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 June 2025
A day after federal agents searched Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home […] there were few signs that Republicans were ready to distance themselves from the former president. Instead, everyone from the Republican National Committee to potential 2024 presidential primary rivals […] echoed Trump's assertion that the Justice Department's search was politically motivated, casting him as a political martyr.
—Mark Niquette and Gregory Korte, Bloomberg (August 9, 2022)There was a horrible, 30-year conflict that brought death to thousands and varying degrees of misery to millions. There was terrible cruelty and abysmal atrocity. There were decades of despair in which it seemed impossible that a polity that had imploded could ever be rebuilt. But the conflict never did rise to the level of civil war. (my emphasis)
—Fintan O’Toole, “Beware Prophecies of Civil War,” The Atlantic, December 16, 2021Violence anticipated is already violence unleashed.
—Paul K. Saint-Amour, Tense Future: Modernism, Total War, Encyclopedic Form (2015)A growing number of Americans fear that Trumpism may ignite a civil war and, as I have mentioned, for some the war has already begun. This grim thesis became more plausible after the FBI's August 8, 2022 recovery of classified documents from Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club, which prompted many of his supporters to clamor for revenge. But they couldn't agree on what form the vengeance should take, or even what to call it. Apparently forgetting their disgust with the “Defund the Police” mantra heard during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, some congressional Republicans embarked upon a “Defund the FBI” crusade. Ever entrepreneurial when it comes to funding opportunities, Trump's “Save America” PAC sought to extract more money from donors by sending some more than 100 email solicitations in the days after the search featuring such taglines as “THEY BROKE INTO MY HOME” and “They’re coming after YOU” (Garcia, “Trump Supporters”). But in the contest over formulating indignant responses to the search of Mar-a-Lago, “civil war” seemed to garner the most attention, although in the dark corners of cyberspace sentiments like “Fuck a Civil War. Give them a REVOLUTION” attracted their share of support as well.
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