The Friday Roundup - 2/2/2024 Edition

The Threat of Civil War, Children's Role in the Family, The Discovery of New Biological "Entities" in the Human Body, The Conservative Fear of Taylor Swift, and Arnold Schwarzenegger's New Docuseries

Every Friday, I share some of the most interesting articles, videos, and books I’m looking at with our subscribers. It’s an eclectic mix fueled by my unique personal variant of ADHD and pattern recognition, so you won’t find compilations like these anywhere else.

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Happy Friday TSFers!

Here are the things I’m reading/watching this week that I thought were worth sharing:

The Next 12 Months Part V: Civil War - Max Remington/We’re Not At The End, But You Can See It From Here

I’ve never read Max Remington’s Substack before, but it came up in my feed today, and after last week’s Roundup about the border crisis, I had to give it a read. Now, I don’t know who Remington is, so I can’t vouch for his knowledge and experience. His about page says he’s an “Independent military/foreign policy writer, occasionally dabbles in culture/politics. Amateur historian.”

What I can say is that his fears about how close we may be to Civil War in America perked my ears up.

He begins by reminding us that Hollywood just casually dropped this trailer a few weeks ago:

Then he launches his prediction:

Since the start of this blog in 2021, I’ve regarded the certainty of internal armed conflict as virtually 100 percent. Regarding civil war, let’s say it went from being a 1-in-1,000 chance in the next 10 to 15 years to 1-in-300 during the same timeframe by the beginning of 2024. However, due to recent events, I’ve moved everything up: I now consider the risk of civil war in the United States to be 1-in-300 in 2024.

Why the drastic shift? Read on and you’ll find out. Before going on, I want to preface things by saying I’m going to be engaging in more speculation than ever before in these last two entries. I’ve been doing more of it as of late, but that’s what happens when events become uncertain to a greater degree. Though I still want to avoid excessive doomerism, there’s no getting around the fact the overall trendline appears very negative. Even in the best-case outcome, 2024 will be the year the risk of civil war goes up dramatically and the prospect of a low-intensity, internal conflict becomes most apparent to all. If you disagree, well, don’t let this blog ruin your good time.

The post that follows is long, and it mostly traces the dispute between Texas and the Federal Government over the border that we talked about in this space last Friday.

The piece was written on January 26 — Washington’s supposed deadline for Texas to stand down — but since it’s now Feb 2, it seems that the most imminent moment of crisis has passed. It’s unclear how hard Washington is willing to push, even with the backing of the Supreme Court on its position that the Federal Border Patrol can cut the razor wire the Texas National Guard has installed (and reinstalls any time it gets cut).

But I think Remington’s assessment of why the danger of Civil War isn’t going to go away any time soon: