Comedian Suggests The ‘21st Century Version Of A Civil War’ Has Already Begun In The U.S.
United we stand, divided we fall.
Ground Picture | Shutterstock Comedian Chris Klemens posited in a recent TikTok that the United States is already amidst a second civil war, albeit one that looks drastically different than past battles.
The comedian suggested the '21st Century version of a Civil War' has already begun in the U.S.
"It's not gonna be us on battlefields, loading bayonets, and shooting at each other," Klemens explained. "It's going to be the violence that we're already experiencing on a day-to-day basis."
The violence he referred to comes from the government and the top 1% of people. It's those in power exploiting everyone else while simultaneously pinning the masses against each other.
It's rich health insurance companies refusing life-saving care while pocketing millions. It's corporations buying properties to sit empty while the unhouse population grows. It's the government voting that food is not considered a human right while American citizens starve.
"It's really like the government and the top percent who are protecting their own interest and don't care if you or me or anybody else lives or dies," Klemens said.
He claimed that government officials do not take action on major issues because they benefit from a divided people.
Klemens used gun control as one example.
"If the government was truly concerned about people getting shot, you know [expletive] well that they could have done something," Klemens insisted. "If they wanted to stop children getting shot in schools, if they wanted religious people to stop getting shot in places of worship, if they wanted grocery store shoppers to stop getting shot in stores, they could do that. However, that keeps everybody divided."
He pointed to how efficiently the government acted when UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed as a clear example of their capabilities. They quickly acted, arresting Luigi Mangione on murder and terrorism charges, seemingly because the person killed was a wealthy CEO — not a child in a school or a random employee on the street.
The wealth disparity in this country is at an extreme level.
"People in power want us divided so that we are focused on attacking each other and not the people who are actually benefiting off of all of our combined strife," Klemens said. "Our government literally doesn't care if we live or die. The people are in it for the power and the money."
While regular people struggle to afford groceries, childcare, and rent, those in power hoard the wealth and pin us against each other. They would rather we focus on the differences between the middle class against the working class, than notice the much larger difference between all of us and the top 1% who hold about 30% of the nation's wealth.
To put this into perspective, "We're actually worse off right now than France was right before the French Revolution," content creator and librarian @liadanmakes explained. "It's much more extreme here right now than it was right before, you know, they started guillotining all the rich people."
So, while we aren't out in the combat zone fighting, we may be in the middle of the modern equivalent of a civil war, one that plays out over social media instead of the battlefield.
Sylvia Ojeda is an author who has over a decade of experience writing novels and screenplays. She covers self-help, relationships, culture, and human interest topics.