Can we make it out of the Covid craziness without violence?

I’m not sure we can.

Because while lots of countries resolve internal conflicts amicably, America has a difficult time doing that. Sweden and Norway separated by a mutual decision in 1905. Canada became a separate, sovereign nation in 1867 in a negotiated process. Even the Soviet Union, a country rife with institutional violence, broke up in 1991.

And many American issues were dealt with peaceably in other countries. The nations mentioned above broke long-standing political problems with mostly peaceful actions.

The UK stopped their Atlantic slave trade by acts of Parliament. That country also brought descendants of that slave trade into public life in a mostly peaceful process.

Not us.

Americans broke ties with the English King in a violent war. We resolved the issue of slavery in a war that killed 2.5% of our population – over 750,000 people at that time. And our citizens who were descendants of that slave trade were only given full rights of citizenship after a violent series of events lasting almost 10 years.

There seems to be something in our DNA that escalates conflicts to the level of violence. This seems to work on both personal and national levels. And it seems that once conflicts escalate past a certain level, they are not resolvable in our country without violence.

Which brings us to our time, the last month of 2021. Covid has been with us for closing in on two years, and at least in parts of the country seems no closer to resolution than it was in March of 2020. Oddly enough, the US has largely been free of Covid related violence, while heated protests and demonstrations have gone on all over the world.

But there seems to be an implacable division about this matter in the US, and in spite of occasional drifts away from a firmly held dogma, the divide does not seem likely to go away any time soon. And there seems to be a slight but growing trend that might be a harbinger of violence to come. On the state level, Florida’s governor has proposed a Florida – not Pentagon – controlled civil guard. Individually, there was an increase of 64% in gun sales nationwide in 2020, and individual gun purchase numbers have continued to increase in 2021.

None of which means violence is inevitable. It’s possible that Covid will be resolved peacefully. I certainly hope that’s true. But Covid has gone on now for almost two years. There’s a growing irritation by many over an institutional failure to return to normal. For the first time in many years, there’s talk about the idea of secession. (At this point, that talk is still on the fringes, but the fact that it’s being seriously talked about at all is interesting).

The next few months will likely tell us if we can resolve this without going to arms. But the longer the lockdowns and mandates continue, the greater the likelihood of violence over these matters. Because Americans will not suddenly become Canadians. We can resolve this in a peaceful way. But we are running out of time.