Once upon a time, between 1861 and 1865 as a matter of fact, the United States had a shadow government with its own President, White House, and constitution. The Confederate States of America was ruled by President Jefferson Davis, who plotted the Civil War from his executive mansion in downtown Richmond, Virginia. In April of 1865, Richmond went down in flames, and the “other” President (the real one), Abraham Lincoln, together with his troops, descended on the Shadow Capital of America to lower the curtain on this dark chapter in American history.
But the Civil War has never really ended. The darkness of human spirit that rose up in the Southern states during the 1860s has never disappeared. In 2016, the ghosted memories of the Richmond Capital was transferred to the all-too-real Washington, DC: when in the direct aftermath of the first African American President, the 44th President of the United States of America was succeeded by TRUMP, the 2nd President of the Confederate States of America.
The TRUMP presidency was destined from the very beginning to gain power from the remnants of the Confederacy. We know that TRUMP rose to power riding on the Birther project, which threw gasoline on the fire of racism and reignited the conflicts that led to Abolitionism. Not since 1865 has a President dared recreate the very premise of the Civil War, White Nationalism, and as a result, reoccupy the Office of the Confederacy. But TRUMP was elected by the same White rebellion, the same disenfranchisement, the same anger, and the same hate.
Many of the New Rebels are direct descendants of the original Supremacists, fighting to reenergize White domination. We saw the New Rebels marching through Charlottesville, cheered on by their Confederate President. We have seen countless acts of Hate crimes, murder, and slaughter fanned by the same division and conflict that brought America to war in the 1860s.
From his perch in the resurrected Shadow Confederate Government in Washington, the concept of the so-called “Deep Administrative State” is a direct attack on the legitimate one: a Civil War being conducted from within the government itself. Where once the Republican, alt-right, Tea-Party was a fringe movement eating away at democratic civility, TRUMP’s detonation of the political machine has furthered rebellious chaos, disorder, and misinformation and its infiltration and transformation of the system.
We are now left with a government emerging from the shadows that in many ways is more dangerous than anything Jefferson Davis may have dreamed. For rather than a country split in two, dueling it out in the killing fields of Virginia and Pennsylvania, the new Civil War is everywhere and ubiquitous. This War is being fought not only in the annals of Washington, but in State governments, the courts and in the streets, where the wheels of democracy have come off the rails as regressive laws are enacted like grenades thrown into the trenches.
High atop his throne in the White House, tweeting disinformation missiles here and there in the fray, the President of the Confederacy activates the pendulum of division further and further: creating a new Hellish Richmond in Washington we never thought would return to existence. This is a war that no one will win so long as there is no Abraham Lincoln to declare victory.