LOS ANGELES.- A film that imagines a second civil war in the near future in USA It revived fears about how divided the country is ahead of the November presidential elections.
Civil Warwhich premiered at the SXSW Festival last week and hits theaters in April, portrays a three-term president – one more than allowed – in Washington fighting against separatist forces in California and Texas.
The film follows a team of journalists (played by the American Kirsten Dunst and the Brazilian Wagner Moura) who travel through a destroyed nation, where the FBI was dissolved and armed forces drones launch attacks against civilians.
movie reviews
In the first reviews, The Atlantic He noted that the film has an uncomfortable resonance in these politically polarized times. Rolling Stone He said that it could be accidentally confused with the present. But how possible is this scenario?
Donald Trump was recently criticized for joking about being a dictator from day one if he wins the election and returns to the White House. The former president faces charges for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 elections, when he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
Biden, who is seeking re-election, accused his predecessor of embracing political violence.
A Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) poll revealed last year that 23% of Americans agree that true patriots can resort to violence to save the country.
“The political elites and Congress are more divided than ever, but the polarization in the citizenry is oversized,” said William Howell, professor of political science at the University of Chicago.
“Answers to vague questions in surveys do not necessarily reflect the reality about how people will behave. I don’t think we are one step away from a civil war,” he added.
“Horrible”
Instead, author Stephen Marche believes that the United States is a case study of a country heading toward civil war, but not as shown in the film.
Marche’s book, The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future, uses political science models to suggest five scenarios that could trigger widespread internal conflict.
For example, the confrontation of anti-government militias with federal forces or the assassination of a president.
“Political violence becomes acceptable and, in a sense, inevitable, because people do not feel that their government is legitimate and therefore feel that violence is the only answer,” Marche said. “I would say that, to some extent, that has already happened in the United States.”
In Marche’s book, retired US Army Colonel Peter Mansoor claims that a new conflict would not be like the first civil war, with armies maneuvering on the battlefield.
“I think it would be a pitched battle, neighbor against neighbor, based on beliefs, skin color and religion. And it would be horrible.”
“Failures and pressures”
In his film, director Alex Garland deliberately avoids the specific origins of the conflict.
Garland states that the film is intended to be a conversation about polarization and populism.
“We don’t need it explained to us: we know exactly why it can happen, we know exactly what the flaws and the pressures are,” Garland said at the production’s premiere last week in Texas.
The three-term president in the film seems to invoke the fears of many Americans that Trump, if re-elected, will try to ignore the maximum term of two presidential terms and seek a third.
“It’s hard to think otherwise, if you take him at his word, and I think we’d be wrong if we didn’t,” Howell said.
If that scenario reaches, according to Marche, talking about a civil war could already be redundant.
“If there were a three-term president, the United States would be over,” he said. “There will be no more United States.”
FUENTE: AFP
