In today's NYT, Jamelle Bouie takes on the doomsayers who claim another Civil War in America is all but inevitable. The January 6 attack on the Capitol by right wing extremists is often cited by pundits as evidence of the inevitability of a war of secession.
Bouie gives a little history lesson regarding the origins of the Confederacy to act as a corrective. The Civil War was driven by King Cotton and the fact it could only be produced at that time by a slave economy. The constriction of slavery to the South and the impoverishment of the soil by the continuous planting of cotton in the region led southern planters to gamble on secession as a way to perpetuate the slaveholding economy.
Nothing similar exists in today's America. Despite the disparity between the 1% and the rest of us, I think it is safe to assume plutocrats such as Jeff Bezos will not be taking up arms against the rest of us in the name of economic supremacy. There are haters out there, and people who would try to roll back the tide of demography, but Bouie thinks their numbers and fervor are doubtful.
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