Winds of Change.NET: The Cold Civil War Survey

The Cold Civil War Survey

by Tim Oren at April 21, 2008 9:00 AM

Alejandro looked over his knees. “Carlito said there is a war in America.”
“A war?”

“A civil war.”

“There is no war, Alejandro, in America.”

“When grandfather helped found the DGI, in Havana, were the Americans at war with the Russians?”

“That was the ‘cold war’.”
Alejandro nodded, his hands coming up to grip his knees. “A cold civil war.”

You may recognize the quote from William Gibson's Spook Country. That notion of a Cold Civil War (henceforth, the CCW) in America percolated in a few lower-profile blogs, then broke out more widely in October, 2007 with high visibility articles from the left and the right.

While looking to see how one of those early posts could predate Spook Country's publication in August, 2007, I found that Gibson had sampled out that very passage on the net in January, 2006. Interesting in itself, but the search also turned up an even earlier, but quite precise formulation of the meme, this in October, 2005:

"While neocons and liberals, or however one categorizes one at this stage, argue over wagging dogs and other fine assortments of beasts and monsters, and while the debate over the merits of real politick vs. salvation politics rages on, there are parts of the world that are going to hell in a hand-basket, reflecting the new cold war climate created by this internal debate. It looks as if America is having a nice cold civil war by proxy over its own identity and future."

That's not Gibson, that's an exiled Syrian blogger reflecting on what ails his homeland. Sometimes the distant observer sees most clearly.

Last holiday season, I, Joe Katzman, Marc "Armed Liberal" Danziger and our spouses were quaffing some (damn fine!) wine at Joe's abode in the Santa Cruz Mountains, when the guys' conversation came around to the CCW. We wondered if it was just a great meme for selling books and drawing links and clicks on the net, or had the makings of something more serious. I suggested a poll, and of course they said 'go for it'. But I found none of the free or reasonably priced online options would do what I wanted. Then. But recently Google has built a nice forms interface to their Docs spreadsheet that's close enough, so here we go.

First some meta-comments on the CCW and the survey's intent.

What would a Cold Civil War look like? By definition, it wouldn't be like 1861, or the Beirut Green Line. Any actual violence is low-key or proxied, or it's not a CCW. It might look like lawfare. It might look like de jure political speech codes, or making political differences into crimes. It might be represented by a willingness to abrogate or twist the rule of law or the Constitution. It could be found in political speech keyed to defeat and humiliate, rather than engage and persuade.

It's easy to point and say "That's exactly what's going on!", and that has certainly been done in the comments here, from both sides. Before equating those accusations to a CCW, it's worth a couple of reflections. The first is the nature of the medium we're using. The Internet has eliminated the chokepoint that formerly kept fringe views out of the main stream media and therefore out of common view and discourse. Many Americans formerly went through life blissfully unaware of Trotskyites, LaRouchies, Paulistas, and all the rest, but not any more. Anyone politically engaged is going to see it all, out to the far fringes of the political galaxy. As well, those of us relative old timers on the Net have been long aware that the medium tends to flaming, and tend to discount heated writings accordingly. Hostile speech from a few percent of the most rabid on either side does not necessarily make a CCW. But, it could reflect a deeper rift in the polity.

Second, consider American history. Anyone who thinks rank political invective started with the net, or in 2000 or 2001, should spend an afternoon in an archive of 19th century American newspapers. Back when the ante to start a paper was a lot lower, every decent sized town had its party organs for the Democrats and the Republicans (or the Whigs). The distinction between news and comment was as blurry then as it's become again, and some of those editorialists would have little to learn from the commenters at LGF or DKos. And this when writing about people they might see on the street the next day, not while hiding behind a distant pseudonym. The Republic survived those virulent tirades. But one thread of them led directly to the bloodiest war in our history, hundreds of thousands of Blue and Gray dead.

How to tell the difference? This survey embodies one hypothesis. Just as opponents in violent warfare are objectified and depersonalized, one might expect to find the same distancing, in a lower key, were we headed for a CCW. We should see a shredding of civil society, a general pulling apart of inter-personal networks along factional lines, moving from more expendable relationships to deeper life choices and moves that push the edge of ethics and legality. Having made the far side of the severed relationship into Other, we can then get on to the next stage. The questions in this survey are therefore posed in a negative sense, of connections broken. (Assuming this were generally happening, it might then be interesting to find whether new connections are being formed, congealing into true factional networks, but that's a different survey.)

A few caveats about the survey...

Though the Google forms interface does a nice job of dumping survey answers into a spreadsheet, it was apparently designed for doing small customer and employee surveys and lacks some of the polling niceties like instant results feedback and graphs. Sorry about that, but I'll try to post running statistics in the comments as frequently as I can manage.

I am not a trained poll or survey designer, and that may show. I do have a graduate background in statistics, and the dusty textbooks to prove it. I'm going to try to gather enough responses to have a chance at statistical significance for a few correlations among answers. If you're into that sort of thing, the experimental design should be obvious when you take the survey. Once I have that number, I will cut off inputs to avoid maintenance issues and any late ballot box stuffing.

The survey is intended for American citizens and residents. For those watching from afar, please relax and observe the natives' behavior, rather than jumping into participant mode.

The survey is uncontrolled. The responders will be self-selected, and are anonymous. Both introduce the possibility of bias, either in the sample or deliberate. There is also no control period to test against, to see if things are better or worse than the 90s, for instance.

Without further ado, please take the:

Cold Civil War Survey

(It should take less than 5 minutes.)

Update: We need Democrats! They are under-represented right now.

Update: I'm periodically posting running averages in the comments. Please take the survey before you peek!

Persons wishing to contact the author of this article for reprints etc. should put a request in the Comments section, or send an email to "joe", over here @windsofchange.net.