Making Sense - Sam Harris - #441 — The Threat of Civil War

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're

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00:00:26.240 it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're

00:00:30.200 doing here, please consider becoming one. I'm here with Stephen Marsh. Stephen, thanks for joining

00:00:38.920 me. Pleasure. So I read your, I think it's your latest book, The Next Civil War, Dispatches from

00:00:45.120 the American Future, with great interest. It came out in 2022, however, so I'll be interested to

00:00:51.280 see if your view has darkened or not in the meantime. But before we get into the book,

00:00:58.280 what is your background as a journalist and writer? What kinds of issues have you focused on,

00:01:03.500 and how do you view that? Well, all of them. I mean, basically anything that, I've had a very

00:01:08.420 strange career. By the time I was 30, I was a Shakespeare professor in New York, and then I

00:01:14.360 became a sort of freelance writer. I was a columnist for Esquire for many years. I've written, you know,

00:01:20.260 cover stories and features for The Atlantic, and The New Yorker, and The New York Times, and pretty

00:01:25.940 much everywhere else. And so, you know, in 2016, I was commissioned to write a piece for a Canadian

00:01:32.580 magazine about the inauguration of Donald Trump. And that's sort of where this project began, and

00:01:38.040 where I really started to work on what is happening in the United States. So your book, as you know,

00:01:44.660 paints a very grim picture of the American future and also the American present. Before we jump into

00:01:50.680 the book itself, how are you viewing America from Canada at this moment? I'm gathering that

00:01:57.380 you guys are not eager to be the 51st state. Can you give us a Canadian's eye view of how our

00:02:02.980 political landscape looks at the moment? Well, I mean, for us, it's terrifying. Like it's, I mean,

00:02:08.340 to me, it's sort of like your big brother shows up at the door in a meth binge with a knife asking for

00:02:13.020 money. I think that would be roughly the take of the Canadian public. I mean, we've gone from

00:02:18.900 basically, you know, when I was 33, there was no border with the United States. Like you just drove

00:02:24.100 across to, you know, very aggressive statements. Over half of Canadians consider the United States

00:02:30.080 an enemy at this point. And we're making the most drastic possible changes to our political life

00:02:36.040 because of the second Trump administration. We have to figure out new security arrangements. We have

00:02:40.920 to diversify our trade in a very elaborate way. Plus we're just going to be punched in the face

00:02:46.220 by the United States. So it has altered the essence of Canadian life, I would say. I don't think it would

00:02:53.160 be too much to say that at this point. Does the 51st state talk seem serious to you on any level?

00:02:59.600 I mean, I understand the tariffs are serious and just the chaos and disorder provoked by much of what

00:03:05.920 the second Trump administration is doing and aims to do is serious. But does the specific idea,

00:03:13.060 does that just seem like any more than a troll to you? Oh, very much so. Yeah. I mean, ask the people

00:03:19.380 of Venezuela if they think it's just a troll. I mean, countries that slide into authoritarianism,

00:03:25.640 which is how I see the current status of the United States, it is absolutely textbook for them to have,

00:03:31.980 you know, wars with their neighbors for no good reason to prolong the authoritarian state, right?

00:03:38.820 And that's a risk that we just cannot take lightly. And we're, we're, nobody, nobody here is taking

00:03:44.660 that lightly at all. But, um, obviously you couldn't really prepare for it, right? I mean,

00:03:49.100 if America wanted to conquer Canada, I assume that would be a fairly easy thing to do, right? I mean,

00:03:54.180 in the scheme of things. Well, I mean, yes and no. I think, um, you know, America is not very good

00:03:59.580 at conquering places, doesn't have a very good track record at actually holding onto them. Even

00:04:05.160 poor countries without, you know, we have machine learning experts and petroleum engineers, but I

00:04:11.000 think what we're really thinking about, I mean, and these are being widely seriously discussed is

00:04:15.760 one option is to become a nuclear power, which is, you know, well within our capacities to do.

00:04:20.580 But the other is a strategy much like Finland uses with Russia, which is called whole society defense.

00:04:26.260 And I think that, I think something like that is probably coming to Canada. If in effect,

00:04:31.420 a kind of national service or conscription where, I mean, Finland knows that if Russia comes for them,

00:04:39.140 they will not be able to withstand it indefinitely, but they can make it clear to Russia that it will 0.53

00:04:44.920 be so painful for them to conquer Finland that it, that it's not worth it. And I think those are really

00:04:50.720 options that are both very much on the table, both very much being discussed here. So we're not

00:04:55.300 powerless at all. It would be asymmetrical, but, you know, asymmetrical warfare does not tend to work

00:05:01.640 out well for the country that is the Goliath and the David and Goliath scenario.

00:05:08.260 Have gun sales changed in Canada as a result?

00:05:10.960 No, Canada is a very gun heavy country. I think we're like, we're compared to you,

00:05:15.960 of course, we're nothing, but you know, we have a lot of wide open spaces. I mean,

00:05:19.640 half my uncles would own guns here, right? I mean, there's lots of hunting here. There's lots of

00:05:23.960 people who live in remote areas, even people who have acreages probably have a 22. So we're,

00:05:29.520 we're already a very armed society.

00:05:32.160 So what most worries you about Trump and his second administration in general?

00:05:38.480 Boy, you asked me to pick one. That's a hard, that's a hard one.

00:05:41.900 Give me your top three or top three.

00:05:44.260 Well, I mean, I think it's just the chaos, right? Like it's the flood the zone strategy. It's just

00:05:50.500 the, the unreliability and the sort of, um, slapdash nature of everything. You just,

00:05:56.180 you literally just don't know what's going to happen next week. I mean, that in the broadest sense

00:06:01.000 is the real danger because, you know, it seems from here that America is a bus going off the cliff

00:06:08.600 and we're pretty attached to that bus. I mean, you know, we, we are, everyone in here has family

00:06:13.920 in the United States. I've lived and worked in the United States. Almost everyone I know has. I mean,

00:06:18.160 as I said, I, I write for all these American publications. We're pretty intertwined, right?

00:06:23.680 Like we're, we're intertwined countries. And so this loss is very painful. And the danger that

00:06:30.380 is imminent in it is because of these sort of the broader sense of incipient chaos from emerging

00:06:36.440 from America. I understand that's not a very satisfying answer because it's so vague,

00:06:40.640 but on the other hand, it's the fact that you don't know what's coming next week.

00:06:45.220 That's the really scary part. If you know what I mean.

00:06:48.340 So, I mean, I obviously agree with your view of Trump and Trumpism and we'll get into just how

00:06:55.460 hyper-partisan and fragmented our political landscape is over here in America. But yeah,

00:07:01.520 I mean, what would you say to someone who doesn't see any of this? I mean, I, so I, I think

00:07:05.940 we have witnessed just an immense brand damage being done to America in the last 10 months.

00:07:12.520 It's just a colossal act of vandalism from my point of view. Yeah. I would think you would share

00:07:17.540 that, but as an outsider, as someone who's principally viewing this from across the border,

00:07:23.760 how would you explain this to someone in America? I mean, it's probably half of American society still

00:07:30.100 at this point who simply doesn't see it this way. I mean, they, they just see a lot of strength. I mean,

00:07:34.340 what Trump is doing is he's forcing our European allies to shoulder their, finally, their fair

00:07:40.280 share of defense costs. There was a massive free rider problem that he solved. He's, he's brought

00:07:45.100 peace or, or a precursor to peace to the Middle East. He's solved a bunch of other wars that no

00:07:51.400 one can probably name, but he's claimed credit for. There's just a lot of strength and cutting

00:07:56.600 through red tape and norm busting where the norms were preventing progress. All of this tariff

00:08:02.440 juggling is just a way of resetting everyone's expectations in a way that is, will redound to

00:08:10.260 the advantage of our country in the end. And now everyone knows to really take us seriously. I mean,

00:08:15.480 finally the, the, the sheriff's in town and rather than an octogenarian who can't utter complete

00:08:20.520 sentences, we have a strong near octogenarian who speaks in a very persuasive word salad.

00:08:27.740 And, uh, this is fantastic. We're born again as a strong country. How is it that you can't see

00:08:34.180 that strength for what it is? Well, I guess the question that I see, you know, the, the Canadian 0.61

00:08:39.820 point of view would be a, it's to the side of that in a certain sense. I mean, because to me,

00:08:46.500 power in the 21st century is a combination of things. One, it's Alliance networks and trade

00:08:53.220 networks, right? That is the, the, the, the scope of your trade networks is the size of your power.

00:08:58.720 That's why Europe formed the European union to get more powerful. It's your scientific community and

00:09:05.420 your engineering base, which was until a year ago, you know, everyone was trying to get a tiny fragment

00:09:12.140 of what America possessed in that space. And you're just throwing those people to the world for free

00:09:18.740 basically. And also I wouldn't underrate soft power as well. Like, I think the idea of America

00:09:24.920 as an aspirational place and ideal, um, is totally shattered, but you know, like, I don't think I

00:09:31.060 need to explain that to Americans. I mean, like there are a large number of Republicans who believe

00:09:36.800 that the 2020 election was stolen. This is truly the collapse of the United States as apparent to

00:09:42.640 people on both sides. And I mean, I think when you look at American polling, you see people

00:09:47.280 consistently who are under the impression that their country is in collapse. Like I, I certainly would

00:09:53.920 never lecture Americans on the subject because I think they know all too well what's happening to

00:09:58.800 them. And I don't think it's left and right that knows what's happening to them. They both have

00:10:03.580 figured out that this system is breaking and the constitutional order is falling apart and

00:10:10.200 everything that sustained America from that constitutional order is collapsing. Right. And

00:10:16.840 so that, that is apparent. It's just, everyone is happy when their side is winning for now, but you

00:10:22.740 know, the, the other side always comes in and then you're under the impression that the breakdown is

00:10:28.380 totaled. So I don't think Americans need a lot of convincing that they're in a country that is

00:10:33.480 not stable. I think that is, that is very apparent to people on both sides. And I would also add

00:10:39.820 that, you know, the case I make in the book and which I really do believe is that Trump is really

00:10:45.040 just a symptom, right? And you can get infuriated by him and he, he does damage in himself, but what

00:10:51.220 he represents properly understood is a breakdown in trusted institutions, a breakdown in, you know,

00:10:58.480 the, the, the American dream of your children doing better than you and a lot of other breakdowns.

00:11:04.520 So, I mean, I, I, I think blaming Trump is just, um, that's just a mug's game. That's not clarity of,

00:11:10.200 of vision to me. Okay. We'll get into the details here. First, when, when did you write the book? It

00:11:15.920 was published in 2022. I forget when in the year, but when were you actually writing it?

00:11:19.920 It was based on a magazine article I wrote in 2018. So that was the first, like I, the first thing I

00:11:24.980 wrote called the next civil war came out in 2018. None of my editors then believed it was, they thought

00:11:29.660 it was all alarmist. And then of course my publisher went, he thought it was alarmist. And then I've been

00:11:34.100 called alarmist the entire publication history of it. But yeah, I worked, I worked on it from 2018,

00:11:39.640 pretty much through 2021.

00:11:43.140 And how did you go about researching it? First, describe what you do in the book. I mean,

00:11:46.520 you, you basically in a semi-fictional way, you, I mean, you're, you, there's a, it's a nonfiction

00:11:51.720 book, but the fictional vignettes where you present a plausible case for how a civil war

00:11:57.220 in the 21st century in America would unfold. Would unfold. I mean, you know, just to be

00:12:02.360 clear, like what the strength of the book is really the models. I mean, and what I wanted to do was take

00:12:07.400 these political models of various things, agricultural models, political decline in faith in the legal

00:12:13.600 system models, you know, the models from Pete Prio about civil war, because the United States

00:12:18.560 is a textbook case of a country headed for civil war, take those models and synthesize them and

00:12:24.420 then present sort of projections of what that might look like. All the while being very clear that like

00:12:29.880 no one knows what the future brings. Some models are stronger than others. All models are wrong.

00:12:35.340 Some models are interesting. And also, you know, I crossed America multiple times talking to

00:12:40.380 white power groups and far left groups and, you know, ordinary people being torn up by this. So

00:12:46.880 I interviewed about 200 people for the book. And then I brought those insights together into one

00:12:52.880 place and then provided sort of projections just to give flesh to the bones, right? Cause the models

00:12:57.900 can be a bit dry if you're just trying to read them. You must've seen Alice Garland's film civil war.

00:13:03.540 Yes. Yeah. Well, what did you think of that in terms of how it depicts the kind of the mechanics

00:13:08.920 and, and unraveling culture of the situation? Look, it's a very entertaining film. I have,

00:13:15.940 and I, and I think it was a necessary film for its time, but you know, for one thing,

00:13:21.040 as a journalist who knows a lot of like war reporters, you probably know them too. That's

00:13:25.840 not really what war reporters are like, um, that character, but also, you know, the civil war,

00:13:32.160 when I talked to the experts on it, what they don't imagine is like, you know, I mean, in his film,

00:13:37.280 Texas and California are on the same side fighting the federal government. I mean,

00:13:41.380 if Texas and California could agree on something, we wouldn't be having this conversation, right?

00:13:47.080 Like, like you wouldn't be having me on your show. Like, and also I think the nature of the civil war

00:13:52.340 that I'm talking about certainly isn't pitted armies against each other, like blue coats versus

00:13:58.880 gray coats in some kind of battle. Like it's the rise of political violence where it explodes.

00:14:05.280 And then, I mean, what really becomes dangerous is that the attempt to suppress the political

00:14:09.660 violence itself becomes a cause of the political violence. And this is what, this is what has

00:14:14.180 happened in all the major civil wars from Algeria, Vietnam, and many, many others, Iraq, Syria,

00:14:23.140 and so on. So like the vision of, of civil war in my book is really about expanded political

00:14:30.400 violence. It's not, you know, state against state or anything like that.

00:14:33.800 Yeah. Yeah. That's a hangup that some people have with the phrase civil war. They're imagining-

00:14:38.800 It makes better television. I mean, it makes better movie, right? But like, but that's not

00:14:42.660 the way these things actually work.

00:14:43.940 Well, the, the, the film is, uh, really must be seen for at least one scene with, uh, the scene

00:14:49.560 with Jesse Plemons where he's wearing those, those red kids' glasses.

00:14:53.260 Incredible.

00:14:53.580 Anytime a guy with a, um, AR-15 is digging a mass grave and he's wearing a kid's dime

00:14:59.740 store glasses, you know, that civilization has properly unraveled.

00:15:03.100 Well, I'm sure that I know also like having talked to snipers in very, like in various

00:15:07.380 situations that those scenes are very close. That's like the, those, those scenes are not

00:15:12.000 wrong. I just think the political framework is wrong, but you know, emotionally correct

00:15:17.080 at a lot of points of that movie.

00:15:18.560 So you did, uh, you said 200, around 200 interviews?

00:15:21.820 Yeah. Around that. I mean, around that, if you, if you include all the people I talked

00:15:26.280 to just on the street and stuff, yeah.

00:15:27.780 But talking to military experts and people who've kind of modeled this out.

00:15:32.040 Yeah. And people who I tried in the, in the military stuff. I mean, I talked to quite a

00:15:35.440 few military people. I tried to get, you know, multiple perspectives on civil war because,

00:15:41.160 you know, America has been fighting these, you know, partisan conflicts for, you know, 80

00:15:45.760 years and there's a lot of expertise. I mean, the vast bulk of that opinion is don't

00:15:51.780 ever start one, but there, I wanted to get different perspectives on it. And I did.

00:15:55.820 So we'll talk about the problem with counterinsurgency and how that creates the chaos it's trying to

00:16:02.480 solve. But what are the risk factors as you view them for civil war in America?

00:16:08.780 Well, I mean, what the typical model, like the model that I got from Prio is that civil wars

00:16:14.700 tend to be a complex cascading system. So that means that it's not any one thing. What it is,

00:16:20.040 is it's the factors that combine into each other. And some of them are very deep. Environmental

00:16:25.200 considerations play a surprisingly big role, a country becoming a minority majority country.

00:16:31.360 So like that was one of the biggest bellwethers of civil war. And that's not a, we know that that's

00:16:37.600 coming in America. Like white people are about to be by 2040 or will be a minority majority. They 0.87

00:16:43.500 will no longer be over 50% of the country. Wherever that happens in the world, there's political

00:16:49.360 violence. And that's not a white people thing that happens in India. It happens, it happens in

00:16:54.900 Africa. It happens everywhere.

00:16:56.680 Let's linger on that point because this is obviously a politically toxic left of center. I mean,

00:17:02.200 there's this mantra, diversity is our strength, which said in scare quotes, makes you sound like

00:17:08.480 a white supremacist. Like, oh yeah, diversity is really our strength. Oh, tell me about it. But

00:17:12.040 this seems to be a pattern wherein a truly pluralistic open society is vulnerable to this

00:17:20.820 negative attractor on the landscape, which is diversity does actually undermine social trust.

00:17:26.440 And this was Robert Putnam's argument. Yeah. No, I mean, and I say this as a, I mean,

00:17:31.080 I am a multiculturalist to my fingertips, like to my essence. I was raised in a multicultural society.

00:17:36.760 I it's the only society I could live in, but there's no question that it does undermine social

00:17:41.300 trust and that it, and that it has causes to that. But I mean, what is more interesting,

00:17:45.620 there's a really fascinating study by out of India where, you know, the, the sort of

00:17:50.700 the Muslims are sort of the lower caste in India and Hindus are higher. And when Muslims get higher 1.00

00:17:57.480 spending power in relation to Hindus, so not higher, but just coming up to equality, that's, 0.92

00:18:04.660 you can, you can literally chart the violence on that nature. So on that reality. So it's not

00:18:10.240 Hindus losing, it's just losing in relation to a sort of underclass. Right. And this is a very 1.00

00:18:17.820 horrific aspect of human nature that, as I said, is not, you know, that's not some problem with just

00:18:23.460 white Americans, you know, American diversity. It is the, one of the most diverse countries in the

00:18:28.740 world. I think by far, like, I think it is the most diverse country in the world by far. Right.

00:18:34.120 Like other countries talk about it. America actually lives it in a way that is unique,

00:18:40.200 frankly. And a lot of the American strengths is a lot of its economic strengths, a lot of its

00:18:45.620 political strengths, a lot of its aspirational strengths and soft power strengths have come

00:18:49.640 from that. But you know, that's a, that's one element of this as well. The other one is just

00:18:54.300 the decline in trust in institutions that's been on course since about 1980. Right. And which,

00:18:59.440 which is just a continuous line and it's all institutions, it's the church, it's the media,

00:19:05.440 it's government, it's the Boy Scouts, it's everything. And so that's, that's also Putnam

00:19:10.940 talked about that a lot. Right. So you have this decline in social trust. Then you also have

00:19:16.320 inequality at both horizontal and vertical, vertical inequality at these just simply unbelievable

00:19:23.940 levels. I mean, much higher than America in 1776. Right. So you have, um, economic stressors,

00:19:31.900 you have political stressors, you have social stressors, you know, they're what they're what

00:19:35.800 the CIA calls a threat multiplier. Right. And America has a lot of threat multipliers at the

00:19:41.040 time. As I said, it's not one thing. It's just all of them folding in on each other. Add to that. I

00:19:46.180 mean, I didn't even mention hyper-partisanship. Yeah. Right. Which is like, which is sort of the tip

00:19:51.180 of the spear, if you will. But that too is, you know, that's a very classic precursor to civil war.

00:19:57.160 Yeah. That's the one that is truly visible, I think, to everyone. I mean, obviously there's

00:20:01.620 wealth inequality and other of these factors, but those can be kind of out of sight and out of mind

00:20:08.020 to many people much of the time. What you really can't ignore, and certainly if you have any

00:20:11.940 online life and consuming the stream of current events on any level, you can't ignore

00:20:17.600 this hyper-partisanship, which seems to have achieved a new level. I mean, there's just frank

00:20:23.980 hatred of the other happening in our society politically. And there's just one norm violation

00:20:31.420 after another in the sense of, there's like, there's no expectation of fairness or collegiality

00:20:37.440 at the level of politics anymore. It's simply, if you can do something and get away with it,

00:20:41.820 then you're going to do it now, lest it be done to you the next time around. So there's a kind

00:20:46.840 of a tit-for-tat sort of political war happening here, which is, seems genuinely new. I mean,

00:20:52.860 I'm sure we've had periods of it in the past that people can recall or reference, but-

00:20:58.220 It's pretty new since about 1876. Like the last time it was this bad was, you're really

00:21:03.980 going into the pre-modern era to get hyper-partisanship levels like you have now, genuinely. Like there

00:21:09.640 was not this level of hyper-partisanship during the Great Depression, for instance.

00:21:12.920 Right. And also trust in institutions was, I mean, even when, you know, I think you make

00:21:17.760 this point in your book, when Kennedy was shot and MLK was shot, and those were happening in

00:21:22.620 contexts where trust in institutions was much, much higher, and it was even higher after Watergate.

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - October 31, 2025

#441 — The Threat of Civil War

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