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There's a lot to admire in this thought provoking thread/post, but I think it reflect a lot of fundamental (and exceptionalist) misunderstandings about the American state and history, which are as reflected in academic scholarship as they are in "popular" narratives. (cont.) https://twitter.com/Scholars_Stage/status/1314916680779395072
The background noise of sub-state violence in Am history is real... but this whole thread misses the backstop of the U.S. Army. The foundational institution of the Am. state is its army, which in the end is the hammer on these sub-groups, whether it be Mormons in the 50s (cont)
the Klan in the 70s, industrial strikers in the Gilded Age, indigenous peoples hostile to white invasion and settlement, etc. This is why the Civil War is distinctive, because it is the one moment when the security institutions of the American state become divided. (cont.)
But if the security services stay unified, Federal authority prevails. Americans (left/right/center) are deeply invested in the notion of our state institutions as free, democratic, and not dominated by disreputable things such as armies. (cont.)
As a consequence, in the academic scholarship, there is more attn paid to the Post Office as an early state institution than to the United States Army. Richard R. John is a great scholar, but there's a reason why his work is probably more prominent than Samuel Watson's. (cont.)
Or there's the profound work of someone like
Theda Skocpol, which is splendid scholarship, but which has helped lead to a field that sees veterans' pensions as constitutive of the American state but neglected the *armies* that served that state. (cont.)
Theda Skocpol, which is splendid scholarship, but which has helped lead to a field that sees veterans' pensions as constitutive of the American state but neglected the *armies* that served that state. (cont.)
So, when one looks at the prospects of "civil war" today, there's a reason why hardly anyone seems to ask what is really the most important ? (and which *is* asked about other polities)--where will the loyalties of the security services lie? And might they truly split? (cont.)
Because the Federal government is a powerful and overbearing thing, whatever fantasies right wing militias or left wing antifa types might have of fomenting revolution. Or however much American historians have masked the importance of the Am. state's monopoly on violence. END
