Where is the next Fort Sumter hiding?

The attack on Fort Sumter marked the official beginning of the Civil War. There was no turning back, and an inevitable internal conflict began. The electoral campaign in the most powerful country in the world seems to be a stage prepared for a new Fort Sumter to appear. Perhaps it has already appeared and it is the recent conviction of the former president in New York. From that moment on, whatever the election result, the United States loses. Either it enthrones Trump, a president with a criminal record, or it enthrones what is left of Biden and the deliriously radical wing of Democrats triumphs with polarization in the U.S. spiraling out of control. Those who think that some kind of normality can be restored in this election and with these candidates are delusional. The conflict can be summarized as follows. The nation is divided, and both sides hate each other. All that anger is going to go somewhere; it is looking for an escape valve. And this is where the recent turbulent weeks come in to play, foreshadowed by the recent turbulent years of American daily life.

It is indisputable that Democrats will try to prevent Trump from reaching the White House at all costs. They could succeed; the Republicans have done little to counter their tricks. They are playing a game they do not understand, while the left is never afraid to push for civil war. It feels comfortable with riots, chaos and violence because that is what allows rights to be usurped in the name of security and democracy, imposing a soft totalitarianism with censorship and control “for the common good.”

The war declared against Donald Trump means that Republicans can no longer trust the courts. The truth is that Trump was guilty as soon as he launched his first campaign for president, saying, in his crude way, that the system worked for itself and not for the citizens. But the hatred that this simple statement aroused has been so widespread and exaggerated that now anything is bomb waiting to explode. At the beginning of this century, the current levels of polarization were difficult to imagine. However, at some point in the last 10 years, the norms of coexistence disappeared, and politics became an all-or-nothing affair in which any victory for the other side It is considered a hecatomb.

Since Trump's conviction, the concept of a fair trial in the United States has taken on a distorted meaning, where institutional agents accuse and try opponents, and the courts have become a place where political dissidents receive punishment for disagreeing with the regime. The process is subordinated to the result, an attitude that, in the end, is incompatible with free democracy. The Trump trials are a vivid reminder that, under Democratic control, the institutions that protect the system of life dreamed of by the founding fathers are capable of doing the opposite of what they are supposed to. The American bureaucracy does not serve the people, it subjects them as an organism focused on self-preservation, irrational and disconnected.

Democrats want to further politicize the U.S. legal system. They have been working hard for decades to politicize every corner of American society, from public schools and higher education institutions to the media and the laws that regulate elections. But politicized jurisprudence pursues a goal in itself and is the reason why the left wants the courts to be administered entirely according to its ideological preferences. The American republic is declining, and the precepts on which it was founded are giving way one by one. The United States is becoming a banana republic where former presidents can be imprisoned by their successors. The problem is not just that the legal system is being politicized, but that half of the American people applaud that process every time it turns against its opponents. Perhaps it's woke tribalism that has grown unchecked, but whatever the cause, the effect is plain to see: Americans have lost interest in the institutions that made their country great and free.

Therefore, without being sure thy can defeat Trump at the polls, the Democrats resorted to the courts to attack their adversary, going against all aspects of his life, which do not make him virtuous, but certainly not a criminal. They have attacked everything from his sex life to his business and his incompetent handling of paperwork. Legal experts say it is highly unlikely that the sentence, which will be handed down in a few weeks, will include prison time. But if the goal is to prevent Trump from serving another full term, and given how easy it was for him to be convicted in New York on such silly charges, nothing can be ruled out. Where these aggressive and persistent legal tactics lead remains to be seen.

At the same time, in just a few months, Americans have witnessed massive demonstrations of support for terrorism on university campuses, mobs occupying schools with camps, the establishment of "autonomous zones," clashes with police, harassing and threatening Jews, and issuing delirious demands. The protests have been an incoherent manifestation of woke university ideals, hardcore Islamism and Arab nationalism, and anarchism and revolutionary communism. The common factor is opposition to Israel and the United States.

Today there are Islamist terrorists hiding in American cities and terrorist sympathizers vandalizing college campuses and government offices. Drug cartels operate in all 50 states with nothing stopping their growth, because institutions are busy with ESG dogma and not their original mission. A large portion of the American public has been conditioned to hate and is willing to burn down businesses, attack law enforcement, persecute and cancel opponents, and establish anarchy at the slightest emotional impulse. This idiotic and suicidal mob is only waiting for an incentive to unleash violence.

The indicator that the protests are a weapon of destabilization rather than spontaneous is their surprising similarity to the previous ones. For example, the creation of autonomous zones, face coverings and dressing alike to promote anonymity are all techniques to interfere with police arrests. All of these tactics require some degree of instruction and training from some kind of "protest consultants." All of these groups work together to achieve a shared goal. But college students are not the only hateful faction. As with the Black Lives Matter protests, Antifa thugs and other professional mobs, this is an extensive network of agitators, largely decentralized, supported politically and financially by a vast network of progressive activists, nonprofits, NGOs and foundations backed largely by large donors aligned with the Democratic Party. This is not the first time that elements of the progressive establishment have lent financial and political support to aid the chaos. Many of the same philanthropies have largely funded "direct action" protesters. But this is the first time they have taken to the streets with a president they like, which reflects a power struggle within the Democratic Party between the radicalized wing and what remains of the dwindling old establishment. The message is evident: this is how we are now.

And this is where the loose puzzle pieces come together. That is why the radicalized progressive ecosystem roars hysterically with the recovery of hostages or with the Israeli advances in the counteroffensive in Gaza. An Israeli victory against Iran in the proxy war that Islamic republic started in order to maintain the status quo in the region, runs contrary to the project (disguised but not entirely) of realigning Iran with the most corrosive wing of the Democratic Party. That realignment required sowing neo-woke antisemitism among the American public, under the impotent noses of the rest of the American political spectrum. Wisely or not, Trump disrupted that plan, caught them off guard, but the architects of this project cannot allow that to happen again.

The United States has the potential for a new Fort Sumter on the surface. Trump's conviction has not only further polarized the country, but has also revealed the fragility of its institutions. Any of these current events can become the point of no return, if they haven't already.