I don’t need your civil war

But for a quarter-inch — a providential turn of the head in a split second — you would not be reading this now. So thank God for that.

Donald Trump’s assassination would not have delivered social peace, in case anybody thinks otherwise. It would have unleashed horrors unlike anything we’ve ever seen in this country. You would not be reading this because we would be at war. You would be at war.

We do not want this. We cannot have it. We must not have it. Not for ourselves and not for our children and not for our children’s children. In the name of God, no.

Not Civil War 2.0. No, no, nothing quite so civilized. We should hope for a mere 620,000 dead in the wake of such a conflict. Think Bosnia. Think Northern Ireland. Instead of armies on the battlefield, think of neighbors killing neighbors.

Earlier this year, when Alex Garland’s film “Civil War” appeared, people debated. This can’t happen here, can it? Many critics complained that the film’s politics were thinly veiled or maybe not veiled enough. Some pointed out that Nick Offerman’s president was obviously and offensively Trumpian. Or maybe he was Bidenesque. Who knows? Blaze News' Matt Himes panned the movie, saying it “has nothing to say about our current political divisions.”

Himes is a dear friend and a colleague, so we are free to disagree. I’m certain “Civil War” has plenty to say about our current political divisions, just not in a straightforward or cogent way — not unlike the conflict depicted in the film.

My takeaway was essentially the same as the Brit who made the movie: Let’s not do this. It doesn’t matter how the thing started or why. I could conjure a thousand reasons — some plenty good ones, too. But the results would be the same.

Death. Immiseration. Poverty. Famine. Rapine. Horror. Robbery. Torture. Terror. More death. More terror. Even more death. A war of all against all.

Shortly before “Civil War” appeared in theaters, I asked another dear friend of mine if she would write a warning to Americans. She had reason to know. She was a refugee of the Bosnian genocide, now an American through and through. She replied, “Give me time to think about it.”

About a week later she wrote: “I’m sorry, I can’t do it. It’s still too raw.”

Bosnia was 30 years ago. It’s still too raw. Seems to me that’s warning enough.

We do not want this. We cannot have it. We must not have it. Not for ourselves and not for our children and not for our children’s children. In the name of God, no.

But we came close about a week ago. And we’re walking on a knife’s edge right now. It could happen in a split second, by inches. Please, let’s not do it.