Wednesday, September 5, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
21
Commentary...
Cultural fault lones a natoonal securoty threat?
By Jim Cornelius
Editor in Chief
“At what point shall we
expect the approach of dan-
ger? By what means shall
we fortify against it? Shall
we expect some transatlan-
tic military giant, to step the
Ocean, and crush us at a
blow? Never! All the armies
of Europe, Asia and Africa
combined… could not by
force, take a drink from the
Ohio, or make a track on the
Blue Ridge, in a trial of a
thousand years.
“At what point then is the
approach of danger to be
expected? I answer, if it ever
reach us, it must spring up
amongst us. It cannot come
from abroad. If destruction
be our lot, we must ourselves
be its author and finisher. As
a nation of freemen, we must
live through all time, or die
by suicide.”
• Abraham Lincoln: The
Perpetuation of Our Political
Institutions:
Address Before the Young
Men’s Lyceum of Springfield,
Illinois,
January 27, 1838
Abraham Lincoln saw
clearly the fault lines upon
which his nation would crack
asunder, a quarter century
before he would be called
upon to suture that fissure
with unprecedented force
as the 16th President of the
United States. He knew that
in 1838, the prosperity, well-
being, the very national secu-
rity of the United States was
under threat from entrenched
and intransigent factions
growing ever more estranged
and irreconcilable.
Such fault lines are grow-
ing wider and deeper again.
Small Wars Journal
re ce ntly pu b l i s h ed an
essay by Major Jeremy
D. Lawhorn, a special-
ist in psychological opera-
tions, with over a decade of
Special Operations experi-
ence. “National Security
Implications of Unresolved
Grievances” is long and
dense — and an important
read. (http://smallwarsjour-
nal.com/jrnl/art/national-
security-implications-unre-
solved-grievances).
Lawhorn in 2018 echoes
Lincoln in 1838:
“Fissures have opened
up along every major demo-
graphic line including race,
ethnicity, religion, place of
origin, gender, and along
every major political and
social issue including immi-
gration, national security, gay
marriage, religious freedom,
structural inequalities and
many others.
“The extreme fracturing
along these fault lines has
wide ranging social, politi-
cal, and security implications
for the United States. Today,
the single greatest challenge
to the United States national
security is the growing threat
posed by people that are
being forced to join factions
that align, if only loosely,
with their beliefs, creating
deep fractures and eroding
the internal cohesion of the
country.”
As a military thinker,
Major Lawhorn applies Carl
von Clausewitz’s seminal
treatise “On War” to under-
stand the United States’ “cen-
ter of gravity” — the locus of
our strength and power.
“For the United States, the
center of gravity is unques-
tionably the population, not
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the military,” he writes.
“We The People” are the
locus of the moral and politi-
cal strength and legitimacy
of the republic. To function
properly as the nation’s “cen-
ter of gravity,” the popula-
tion has to have a certain
level of trust in the social
contract, in the institutions
of government and in its fel-
low citizens. As these erode,
so erodes the capabilities and
the strength of the nation.
Major Lawhorn writes
that, “…critical vulner-
abilities are manifesting
in the expanding fractures
among the population, fric-
tion between the population
and the government, and the
unresolved grievances held
by segments of the popula-
tion. Collectively, these vul-
nerabilities reduce the sense
of national cohesion, faith
in the political system, trust
in government, and trust
between neighbors… If not
properly addressed, these
fractures will continue to
present significant challenges
and have potentially devastat-
ing consequences for national
security.”
Posing the breakdown in
civic function as a national
security threat is sobering,
and offers an opportunity to
pause and reflect upon what
we’re doing to ourselves —
and the degree to which we
make ourselves vulnerable
to insidious influence opera-
tions from hostile powers.
The Russians’ 2016 influence
campaign created nothing; it
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merely focused on striking at
existing vulnerabilities, the
weak points of race relations,
fear of the “other” and our
ever-increasing willingness
to see those who disagree
with us on policy not only as
adversaries to be debated, but
enemies to be defeated and
destroyed.
The way we communi-
cate is both a symptom and
a cause of the fractures that
Lawhorn identifies.
“While technology is
useful for those who seek
solidarity and redress for
legitimate grievances, it also
increases homophily and by
default creates substantial
echo chambers,” Lawhorn
writes. “These echo cham-
bers emerge on all sides of
issues where people do not
invite new ideas but rather
become increasingly commit-
ted to their views and causes.
This is important to under-
stand, because people that
have grievances become even
more committed while those
who reject those grievances
also become more commit-
ted. The problem is that many
people consume information
that reflects their preexist-
ing beliefs and ideological
predilections without having
to consider or grapple with
different perspectives. These
echo chambers result in
incendiary hyper-partisanship
creating a population that is
unwilling to compromise or
cooperate across the various
fault lines. When people con-
tinue to surround themselves,
physically or virtually, with
people that share the same
views it creates a reinforce-
ment mechanism that makes
them feel that their views are
correct. This confirmation
bias has potentially disas-
trous consequences as society
becomes more entrenched in
their beliefs.”
This may not be fixable.
It bears keeping in mind that
warnings from Lincoln and
others in the decades leading
up to the American Civil War
of 1861-65 did not stop the
train from hurtling down the
track with the throttle stuck
and the whistle shrieking.
It’s not just that we love our
devices and the easy, shallow
“discourse” they provide.
It’s not just that politicians
make hay out of division
and fear; as Sisters resident
Jack McGowan pointed out
years ago to the City Club of
Portland, there is a “business
of division.” A great many
people make a very lucrative
living out of driving wedges
into the fault lines, and noth-
ing suits them better than
to see those cracks open up
wider and wider.
So maybe we should ask
ourselves why we’re mak-
ing the carrion birds that
feed on division fat while
we sit loading the cartridges
in the revolver — tweet by
tweet, meme by meme, panel
shout-fest by panel shout-
fest — spinning the cylinder,
our finger on the trigger of
the implement of our own
destruction.
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