The Next Civil War

This book is sort of the right wing answer to Stephen Marche's left wing "The Next Civil War". One major difference, however, is this book about a possible second American Civil War actually has a civil war in it. It is explicitly fiction, where Marche's book doesn't really provide a plot so much as a journalistic narrative sometimes, and Marche doesn't bother disguising names.The plot is interesting and relatively well executed. The exception is the Augustine story line (Augustine is a killer AI entity created in a conspiracy by companies that are suspiciously like Alphabet, Meta and Alibaba) which is way too far out there given that this story is set just after Trump (named Owens in the book) is reelected in 2024. The tech to create this AI and to enable to do what it does is simply not even close to available. This AI singlehandedly creates the circumstance that cause the civil war and then pretty much disappears. We just hear that it is involved in a struggle with a Chinese AI and Augustine's creators are trying to destroy it by messing up the entire internet because they realize it murdered its creator.The name disguising is pretty thin; you will have no trouble knowing exactly who is who. It would have been better if he just used everyone's names. The writing as craft is often pretty mediocre. The author clearly is not a professional writer.As I said earlier, the one place this story really shines is in the believability of the story arc (outside the Augustine part). Right is treated much better than left, but the leftists are not all evil stooges (like the right wingers are in Marche's book). I have read several books in this genre, and this is the best one I have seen yet. Had the editors done a little better job, this could have been a truly great book.

Mr. Nowland, as an ORSA from what I gather, does a very good job at detailing a potential dystopian scenario, ultimately theorizing that civil conflict in the US will likely not look like the "second generation warfare" we all know occured in 1861-1865. (This book is different from Mr. Kawczynski's very good book "The Coming Civil War" in that Nowland is telling a fictional story, whereas Kawczynski conducted a probability analysis of different outcomes.) I pray Nowland's scenario never materializes, however it is unfortunate that many parts of his story have indeed occured over the past year. The United States has suffered through other periods of political balkinization before (late 1960s- mid 1970s) as well as social decay (1930s, 1960s-early '80s), however I applaud Mr. Nowland for capturing the incendiary and toxic nature of big tech and social media today as these accelerate the country towards conflict faster than anything in the past. Highly recommended.

One way to test a theory, is to extend it to an unabated outcome, just to see how it would look like. This work rolls every ridiculous leftist idiosyncrasies into a few characters, that are instantly recognizable and gives them free rein. What comes next is the long predicted resistance, detailed matter-of-factly without venturing off into fantasy-land. Historians of future (when AI wiped out the left) will debate if this book was a foreshadow or a recount. Either way, its deliciously entertaining.

Patriots, this is a good read. I read it right after Ben Shapiro's latest cover-to-cover; couldn't put it down!I love how it shows how both sides operate off of extreme assumptions of each other. In the end, were there to be a conflict between Left and Right, and the military stays out or is divided, its not very disputed which side would win. All in all, its a very realistic and interesting take. I pray this never becomes our reality.

You would think this book was written yesterday, in the era of Covid, not 2019. Nowland describes the "next civil war" through the eyes of myriad participants, giving us a well rounded look as to where we might be headed. I enjoy these types of books as they me flesh out different scenarios / outcomes of which I might not have thought, and thus help me mentally prepare for potential futures.

Quick read. Believable scenario with easily recognizable characters. Although the coming civil war will have had a different start, much of the coming chaos will be just like the author described.

This is a really accurate depiction of how a new civil war could go down. It’s terrifying to think that the events described could actually become reality due to today’s political climate. This is an important read.