Anyone who was paying attention should be unsurprised by John McCain's apparently final rejection of a much ballyhooed and maligned Kerry/McCain ticket. Apart from the many concrete reasons it was never likely to happen, more than perhaps anything else it never passed the gut test. This country remains deeply divided over fundamental issues, and values - perhaps to a broader and deeper extent than at anytime since 1860 - and the very notion of a genuinely bipartisan ticket (meaning not say Kerry/Chaffee or Bush/Miller) would have been the political equivalent of premature intimacy.
That said, I continue to be deeply worried about the coming years, not only because I suspect that this election will be as pivotal, and important, as the other most pivotal, and important elections in American history (1968, 1932, 1896, 1896, 1860, etc), but that new political (and economic and cultural) eras do not tend to be born in this country peaceably. The title of this diary was intentionally hyperbolic - there is yet little reason to suspect that the culture war will become a full-blown shooting war - but as I have said previously I would not be surprised to see widespread civil and social unrest in the next decade, and quite possibly even some political violence.
Yet, for all the general talk of "red vs blue" America, and the platitudes about bitter partisanship, there is frequently little mention of specifics. And I don't think one can even begin to understand how deeply the divide is without approaching this question with a fair amount of specificity. I will tell you point blank that I believe this divide is predicated fundamentally on two areas, foreign policy and social issues.
It is patently obvious to most Democrats that the war in Iraq was a diversion from the broader war on terror, and that we ought to be focusing on strengthening our alliances in order to contain the threat posed by al Qaeda, and more generally radical Islam. I also suspect that quietly, if not secretly, a great many Democrats do not believe that the threat of Islamist terror should be the foremost priority of the country. It is equally obvious to most Republicans that the war in Iraq was an integral part of the broader war on terror, and that the only way we can end the threat posed by al Qaeda, and more generally radical Islam, is by promoting (through the use of force, if necessary) reform in the Arab and wide Muslim world. Republicans also tend to see the threat of Islamist terror as the most important issue of our time. To date, this divide - however deep - has been potent, but in honesty hasn't particularly mattered. We have an all volunteer army, and a government nursing its fiscal fantasies, so new real sacrifices or hardships have been asked of those who oppose the war in Iraq, or the broader policy to which it is tied.
Despite Mr. Kerry's realist posture, and his stated intent to privilege "security" over "democracy" in foreign policy (vis a vis the Iraq and the greater middle east), I strongly suspect that events (particularly another terrorist attack) would compel him to take up the mantle of reformism, which is another way of saying that no matter who is elected, I fully expect that the basic contours of the Bush foreign policy will be upheld. The trouble, of course, is that our military is already stretched to the bone, and an even modest expansion of Mr. Bush's interventionism would almost certainly require limited conscription, and may ultimately require a much broader draft. (And maintaining troop strength in Iraq alone may require conscription). Yet, in a country where perhaps as much as half the population (who are well represented on this blog) does not share the Bush-Republican view that the "promotion of reform" in the Arab and wider Muslim world is fundamental to winning the war on terror, and believe that the war in Iraq was a diversion from the war on terror, one begins to suspect that conscription amid such cognitive dissonance could bring the kind of civil unrest one saw in the north in the early 1860s (when a great many northerners did not believe that holding the union together was a cause worth dying for).
And then there's the question of social issues. As far as much of the left, and probably most Democrats are concerned, liberals won the culture war years ago, and take for granted abortion rights, free speech, and increasingly gay rights. To the same extent, Republicans believe that the last three and half decades have been an aberration - the "great disruption" as a certain prominent social conservative said - and that abortion rights, acccess to contraception, and gay rights will all be rolled back eventually, and that something resembling the Hayes Code will be reinstated, regulating all popular culture. As I think we all recognize, the GOP has gotten enormous mileage since the 68 election from demagoging cultural issues, but until the current administration they have given social and religious conservatives little of substance, little to show for their loyalty. And they know it. Whether Bush or Kerry is elected this fall, we are on the verge of a decisive time, when (I suspect) a second Bush administration will make a concerted effort to roll back the social and cultural progress of the past several decades, deeply provoking the wrath of the Democratic base, or a Kerry administration will make it abundantly clear that the religious right has lost the culture war, deeply provoking their wrath. Either way, I think, America is headed for a showdown - perhaps a kind of final battle - in the culture wars.
As I said in a previous diary, I fully expect that the economy will take a hard turn for the worse in the next half decade, whether because of a collapse in the housing market, another (or multiple) major terrorist attacks on American soil, flight from American treasuries (followed by a collapse in the dollar, and a potential deflationary spiral), a huge surge in energy prices, or some combination of the above, which is to say that I expect the coming confrontations over foreign policy and social issues to take place in an environment of economic hardship, which is always a bad, bad environment to peaceably resolve major philosophical differences.
