Interpreting the moods of the United States, fiercely divided on the political scene, Alex Garland in 2024, on the eve of the elections that made Donald Trump the President for a second time, directed Civil War: a tale of political fantasy in which a portion of the USA rose up against a government degenerating into a parafascist dictatorship. The story featured a strange alliance between two states historically far apart ideologically… and someone saw it as the boldest gamble of the saga. In the wake of the midterm elections that overturned that result, that same someone is reconsidering it.
Did Civil War foreshadow the blue wave of the Democrats in the USA?
Let it be clear: the recently concluded midterm elections were a monument to democracy, not the brutal Civil War of which Alex Garland spoke two years earlier. Yet there remains in the US a strong division, a very intense social and ideological tension, which that gripping film starring Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaney and Jesse Plemons portrayed in a paroxysmic way. In the story it was suggested that California and Texas had formed an alliance to create a new reality, Western Forces, and to declare war on the rest of the United States, thereby launching a truly bloody civil war. The pairing was curious: a state with a long democratic tradition paired with another that had long been Republican. As you may know, in reality after the midterm elections Texas unexpectedly became a Democratic-majority state, after thirty years during which no politician from that party had come close to the top offices. In short, Texas found itself genuinely “an ally” of California in opposing the President.
Sonny Bunch, a journalist who writes for The Bulwark (a publication aligned between the center and the right) posted on X: “I’m saying Civil War was deliberately vague to the point of being ideologically incoherent, to avoid making the delusions of the culture war too current. Alex Garland replies: I literally predicted the uprising of California and Texas against the populist fraud at the White House.” The journalist was replying to several users who in recent hours had thought about the premise of Civil War, apparently paradoxical… and now almost a reality.
Comments