Let's Have Congressional Glasnost

I can't believe I'm only now hearing the phrase, "cold civil war" to describe the current state of the USA. Supposedly it comes from that master of naming modern things, William Gibson. It seems like such an apt phrase, especially if you've seen the various maps comparing current voting trends to nineteenth-century slavery laws.

But speaking of nineteenth-century slavery laws, America's civil war was itself preceded by a cold war of sorts, as they tried to find a compromise where there was none. That's one reason why so many of the presidents in the early 1800's are not too famous: they either failed to find a compromise on slavery, or found a temporary solution that has been long-since forgotten.  Well, that's the impression I get, having learned American history one sentence fragment at a time on Jeopardy.  And The Simpsons.

Sorry, I couldn't find a clip that just has The Mediocre Presidents song, so just fast forward the video to 3min, 48s.  To this day, I can't hear William Henry Harrison's name without adding to myself, "I died in thirty days."

Anyway, The Cold Civil War is an apt description. The division is deep, there's not much room for compromise, and the divisions are based around the same lines.  I'm not implying that the Americans are headed for another civil war. But the issues do seem intractable.

What's really weird is that when I went searching on the Internet to see if people were actually using the phrase, I found examples from both sides of the divide.  Since the Civil War didn't end well for one side, you'd think there'd be a reluctance to analogise current cultural conflicts to that one.