You say you want a revolution, well, you know, we all wanna change the world
– John Lennon/Paul McCartney

Three-quarters of a million people were killed in the American Civil War, and another half million were wounded – many grievously.

That was in a country with a population of less than a tenth of today’s America. The equivalent deaths in today’s America would be about eight million. That’s something like 20x the American deaths in WWII.

Much of Atlanta was burned to the ground in the Civil War, as were large sections of Charleston, Vicksburg and Richmond.

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by a southern sympathizer near the end of the war, five days after General Robert E. Lee surrendered the main Confederate army.

The end of the war did not end the anger and hate. The country was divided for generations. I remember growing up in the 60s – in Colorado of all places – and kids would still tease one another about being “Rebels” or “Yankees” a century after the Civil War.

In the south, Blacks were freed from slavery but the defeated separatists subjected them to a new yoke of Jim Crow laws preventing them from voting, obtaining equal educations, living where they wanted, and loving whom they wished.

The Civil War was the most violent and destructive thing that ever happened to America.

Some people want another one.

On both the left and the right, many people are full of anger and hate for the “other side.” That much, I get. I’m pretty angry myself, and I confess to some hatred for the other side on occasion.

The silo’ed news sources on the internet contribute to this. Many people don’t look at news sources other than the ones that say what they want to hear – namely, that the other side is stupid, evil and perhaps subhuman. And hooray for our side!

That’s natural. People believe what they want to believe, and eventually they cherish those beliefs. They watch “news” that tells them their cherished beliefs are right, and that they are right to cherish them.

The news sources themselves are partly to blame. Generations of bias, then sheer incompetence, and now click-baiting, have produced a media industry that often lacks honesty and credibility.

The end result is that anger and hate own some of us. Some of us want not only to beat the other side at the ballot box, and not only to beat the other side in the courts of law, and not only to beat the other side in the court of public opinion. They want to beat the other side literally. They want to kill, dismember and maim the other side.

They want another civil war.

Here’s my advice to those people. Your anger and hate will not produce a beneficial outcome for America.

Moreover, your anger and hate will not produce a beneficial outcome for you.

Look within. Anger and hate are not generated by the objects of your anger and hate; anger and hate come from inside you. And they are consuming you.

But when you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out.