Civil War II?

[this was originally published on a now defunct blog I was writing for the FOX Illinois site. I don't recall the actual publication date, but obviously, a lot has transpired since then.]

Are we on the verge of a second Civil War? I doubt it, but some curious things are starting to happen. 

Tensions between Liberals and Conservatives has always been present, but since the 2008 presidential election, this deep-seeded tension seem to have been intensifying.  

Several months ago, social media helped me reconnect with my childhood friend. We had been out of contact for about 15 years. Prior to this reconnection, I really didn't have any knowledge about the Tea Party Movement (TPM or "Teabaggers" as the Left have dubbed them). I had started using Twitter shortly before all of this, but hadn't made all of the "connections" yet.

I noticed that my friend was very passionate about his patriotism. He was calling out "true patriots" in periodic Facebook, MySpace and Twitter posts. Things started to get very strange when he began posting remarks comparing Obama with Hitler and claiming he was a Socialist. I started seeing other comments appearing in other places all around the web.

After a while, my friend and I stopped corresponding. I assume it was because I was never in agreement with a lot of his radical postings and was very clear about this fact. There was a point where I did bring up the subject of a second Civil War. He eluded to the fact that when (not if) this happened, the TPM would be at the forefront and Texas would be the first state to secede from the Union. 

This brought about a fairly scary thought. What if the TPM is militarizing? If they truly saw the Obama administration as an evil power rising to choke Capitalism out of America, who could stop them? Granted, if the TPM attempted to rise against the might of the U.S. Armed forces, it would be more like a crushed riot than an actual war. 

Today, I read a disturbing "tweet" that came across my Twitter feed. It contained a link to an article from biggovernment.com which appears to be a far-right conspiracy column. It was the headline that caught my attention: "CNN, Huffington Post Urge Violence Against Republicans". Contained within in the article is the same "Socialism Hitler" rhetoric that the TPM has been spewing from very early on. The article takes several comments out of context and the author, Kristinn Taylor appears to imply that that Obama administration somehow endorses these comments. The fact is that both the CNN and Huffington posts articles are simply begging Obama to be politically tougher on the GOP for trying to stall talks about Heath-care Reform and whatever hot-button policy is on the cutting board at the moment.  

I said my peace in a comment and moved in, knowing full-well that the psycho-babel would continue on in the comments section (there are some truly scary posts by the way). I didn't think much more of it, until I saw a post (again on Twitter) that Mitt Romney had been threatened on a flight out of Vancouver.

It is very clear at this moment that he was not attacked due to any government sanctioned violence, but as soon as I saw the tweet from @Breakingnews I could already hear the well-oiled conspiracy cogs of the TPM turning. 

As I have mentioned in prior blogs, I am not a conspiracy theorist (although I do find many of them fascinating) and I am also not an extremist. I don't consider myself to be far left (although some of my family members may disagree) and also not far right (because I do possess at least an ounce of common sense). I have always found that there is common ground in most arguments and is better to look at things down the middle. 

With all of that said, I don't really see Liberals taking a violent path against Republicans, because the message of most Liberals is that of peace and cooperation. I do, however, see potentially a misguided member or group from within the TPM or other extremist group orchestrating what would look like a Liberal attack on the far right. I can see some of the commenters from the Big Government post "connecting the dots" to the Mitt Romney article. I just hope the man who threatened Mr. Romney is not tied to any far Left groups. 

My sincere hope is that these tensions can die down a bit and we can all come together as a nation and build something that we can all be proud of, and I really do believe that Obama is trying.