If you have not read Part 1 and Part 2, please do so before continuing…

I began my proposition with the assertion that we are in the early stages of the Third American War.

The growing violence along the fault-lines of police brutality, racial tension, and economic injustice are early warning signs that inequality is widening and the temperature of division is increasing. Two opposing camps are taking shape, and the echoes of the First and Second American Wars are getting louder. The similarities as they pertain to the ideal that all men and women are created equal and deserve equal protection under the law are in focus while recent events reveal the commitment of those in power to asymmetrically adjudicate and shape narratives.

In the First War, those in power held to the logical lineage of the Divine Right of Kings and were defeated.

In the Second War, those in power did not hold to the logical lineage of the Divine Right of Kings and were victorious.

Let’s take a look our current situation through the lens of the Divine Right of Kings and the ideal that all men and women are created equal. Those wielding more power, by their actions, support the notion that the President can ‘do no wrong’. This in-group demands protection under the law but is not bound by it (i.e. consider the weaponization of the legal system, the opposition to revealing tax returns, the conviction of numerous inner-circle associates and subsequent pardons, to name just a few). The assertion that ‘black lives matter’ is met with proclamations that ‘all lives matter’ (as if equality is present). Sharing facts or personal experiences of injustice are met with dismissal, hatred, and gaslighting. Denial of white privilege abounds, even though it is quite similar to the faction of those who claimed close association to the King. I could offer more examples, but the pattern holds, as I see it. You may disagree with my observations and see different realities. However, I would hope that however we see the circumstances in America today that one thing is clear – we are a nation more divided than united, and the fault-lines are deepening… and similar to those in the First and Second American Wars.

You may think that there is nonviolent way out of our predicament. That’s surely possible. But I am convinced that the outcome of the upcoming presidential election, at best, only delays the kinetic start of the Third American War. The roots of division are deep and those who wield the most power have not been disincentivized to continue their path. Nor do I believe that either major political party has assembled the moral and political will to completely avoid what I see is inevitable. But the intensity and duration of the Third American War is not clear or prescribed.

If I’m wrong and the Third American War is avoidable, America is still at another fork in the road. Either we pursue this ideal that everyone must be protected and bound by the same laws… or we do not. And if we do not pursue that ideal, then I expect there are many who are willing to rise up and pursue that ideal, even at the risk of losing their life, just as the Founding Fathers in the First American War and the Abolitionists in the Second American War chose to do. If the pattern holds from the First and Second, then whoever embodies the logical (and political) lineage of the Divine Right of Kings will be defeated. (Given the choices available in November, I’m convinced one political party exemplifies this lineage more fully.) If the pattern does not hold, then the American experiment, founded on the ideal that all men and women are created equal, will become a memory. I think it is that straight-forward.

Regardless of the outcome of the upcoming election, I don’t believe that either outcome will bring an end to this tension that has defined America even before America was America. I would much rather reverse course from recent decades of unrest and encourage all Americans to embody principles where the law binds and protects everyone equally. Or at least with systemic and intentional regard for equality, instead of accolades for law breakers of the in-group closest to those in power. Empires have fallen and nations have crumbled when the political will of the few became too onerous for the many. Given the technologies available, our rivalries and ideological oppositions offer fertile soil for self-destruction while we remain trapped by the conservatism of being ruled over by those whom the law protects but does not bind while binding those the law does not protect.

My hope is that we will live up to our ideals and form a more perfect union. We have enough warning signs – will we heed them?