Now, be prepared for a big coronavirus civil battle

John T Bennett, The Independent

A coronavirus-fuelled Rural vs. Urban conflict is raging, and the death toll already surpasses five of the country’s most recent armed conflicts. The body count in what might be called the Second Civil War is now above 62,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.  Unless world-renowned medical experts like Anthony Fauci — the darling of the mainstream media and American political left, who too often is drawn into and diminished by Donald Trump’s outrageous reality show presidency — this increasingly un-civil conflict won’t come close to the circa 600,000 American soldiers who died in the first one.

But the Covid-19 pandemic that is fuelling America’s Rural-Urban war already has felled more Americans than the Vietnam War (58,200), the First World War (53,402), the Korean War (36,574), the 2003 Iraq conflict (4,431) and the Afghanistan misadventure, the longest armed conflict in American history (2,445). And the body count, the dangerous and misleading metric too many US commanders-in-chief have used to make wartime decisions, is rising on this Rural-Urban battlefield one should probably begin calling the “United” States of America.

The death toll of the first US Civil War is astonishing considering soldiers had rather crude weapons like muskets, which had to be refilled frequently, and bayonets. The Second Civil War is being waged with weapons that are anything but crude: indifference, bitterness, grievance and old-fashioned hate.

Rural America is ready to lock and load. Urban America is cowering in a lockdown. A heavily armed group of Rural citizens stormed Michigan’s State Capitol on Thursday, powerful assault rifles at the ready. But this Second Civil War won’t be a shooting war, likely to the chagrin of some on the far right — and, let’s be honest, the not-so-far right. Rather, this war will be — no, already is being — waged with microscopic Covid-19 cells as Republican-leaning Rural America throws open its businesses, schools and sporting venues, ensuring they keep the deadly virus in circulation — at the expense of more densely populated Democratic-leaning Urban areas.

Red vs. Blue. Rural vs. Urban. Us vs. Them.

Enter Donald Trump, the Manhattanite who, still almost unbelievably, has become an almost Christ-like figure in three areas of the “United” States: the Sun Belt (South and Southwest), the Midwest and the Mountain West. All are predominantly rural. If one compares a map of the final 2016 presidential election results to one showing which states are reopening amid the still-spreading coronavirus, they’ll see an almost mirror image.

The penthouse-dwelling, luxury resort-owning president has the legal authority to run the entire federal government and conduct US foreign policy on behalf of all 50 states. But, let’s be clear, he is the true leader of roughly half.

“The Governor of Michigan should give a little, and put out the fire. These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk to them, make a deal,” Trump tweeted Friday morning.Liberals have mused for five years that Trump wants to trigger an second armed conflict with Americans shooting at their countrymen. This correspondent has never bought in to such fears, but the president clearly is willing — eager, even as he seems ready to do anything to stay in power — to fan the flames of the growing Rural-Urban divide. The “very good people” tweet is eerily reminiscent of his August 2017 remark that there was “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides” of the Charlottesville, Virginia violence spawned by white supremacist protests there that summer that killed one counter-protester.

But, in the president’s mind, keeping his mostly Rural base energised heading into November’s (scheduled) election is paramount, as this correspondent writes daily. One way, amid stay-at-home orders and a shuttered economy, is by siding with them on what seems their core argument: Government-ordered boredom and a temporary economic downturn is unconstitutional; but citizens have a constitutional right to the option to undertake activities — including commerce — to contract the coronavirus or any other transmittable disease.