Author note: Originally published in June 2025, I took the post down as some events transpired. Putting this back up in November with minor touchups.
Guess who’s back!?? Been a minute; will almost certainly be a minute more before the next one. Why is a long story; why I want to blog on this is a tad shorter.
I carried out a citizen’s duty just the other day. I then watched the 2024 movie Civil War. While there was a lot of talk that the movie did not take a strong stance politically, I wholeheartedly disagree. Instead, Civil War was merely ahead of its time, speaking not to then, but of our future, the here and now.
The context is that in the very near future – a decade at most, two decades being far too long – the United States has splintered into a warm-not-scalding (no indication of NBC’s being deployed) second civil war. Many factions partake – Feds, Western Forces, Florida, Alaska, Greenland, more – but only two are followed closely in the movie: the Western Forces of California and Texas, and the Feds with a third term president of the Disunited States. The WF is on the offensive, besieging the Feds in Washington DC with the sole immediate goal of dislodging the president.
Again, at release Civil War was said to not do enough calling out of the 2020s’ political climate, adding labels to the sides in the war. I agree at times – the audience cannot differentiate between the fighters easily, who controls what, etc. as the madness is faceless. It is simply Americans killing Americans. Lone wolves and detached military elements fighting suburb to suburb, speaking the same language, dressing often the same way. There though is where the similarity begins to thin.
The Western Forces, et. al
Hear me out: the WF represents today’s non-MAGA groups. Here’s why:
Everyone not the Feds are the “insurrectionists”. Much like 2025’s politics, there is MAGA (singular) and everyone else (plural, but of the ‘other’ side). In the movie, irregulars make up the WF – civilian dress with body armor and a smattering of US uniforms, much like the start of the OG US Civil War more than a century ago (both sides wore similar and mismatched uniforms early on). So long as the gun shoots and the armor stops a bullet and gas guzzles, the WF is unified by a singular purpose of ‘not the Feds’.
There is a point that the president is referred to be alongside famous historical dictators. I write this line on “No Kings” Day on June 14th (and after more have happened with record participants), a nationwide protest to how GOP administrators are conducting themselves in Washington DC. No kings, no dictators, no illusion to what ‘side’ the WF is on vs what side the Civil War president is on.
WF is implied to have ties to the rest of the world, ie Europe, perhaps China (or certainly China, as a character is shot for being from Hong Kong). Which political party today has cried for isolationism? Wars-of-a-kind (trade) with Europe, China? Especially dislikes China? (Pronounce “China” in your head in any way that comes to mind.)
Lastly, the main elements of the WF are California and Texas. This pair makes up about 20% and more of the total US population today, not to mention being the top two largest economies in the States. With population, access to oceans of trade, separate but similar cultures of independence, oil and natural resource self-sufficiency, depos of technology and industry, and economies that dwarf most other nations in the world, they kick serious behind in Civil War. In the real world, California has also been the target of GOP federal interference as of late, but CA being a liberal state does not account for Texas; rather, the killer combo of robust economy and dense population correlate very strongly with more liberal tendencies historically and cross-culturally. That doesn’t sound too MAGA.
All that is for the WF, who seem to be the ‘good-enough’ guys despite plenty of war crimes (e.g. prisoner execution*). What about the Feds?
Feds, ie The United States
The next evolution of modern MAGA. In the order that I jotted down from the movie:
The administration kills the press on sight anywhere near Washington DC. What other administration is actively hostile to the White House press pool?
The president sits in his unconstitutional third term. (Someone has mentioned third terms lately.)
A blonde, full-flag waving suicide bomber blows themselves up in a group of thirsty civilians full of women, children, and the elderly. The “full-flag” is what the Feds fly. Cheating a little bit and putting the last point I note below here: the Secret Service too dies to a man defending the man in the White House, a demonstration of extreme fanaticism (this after the regular Fed army had surrendered, making the end of the war inevitable). Such zealotry to a single man shows echoes of a unified party line, arguably the strongest suit of one party over the others in today’s age.
(This is not a jab at the Secret Service who aim to do their job today to the utmost and more of capability. The difference of the movie is that the Secret Service seem to have forgotten the oath to the Constitution [not a man] they would have taken today.)
Killing citizens isn’t just left up to lone wolf murderers. Rather, it is mentioned casually (such a regular thing) that the president has a pattern of ordering the execution of citizens. Might imply a lack of due process, sure, but it does stand that a particular president now is ordering federal soldiers to take the place of police and to use force on civilians in California, Chicago, and elsewhere. Just sayin’.
Inflation is rampant ($300 USD buys a sandwich). Over the last few months, the real fed chairman has pushed back on dictated economic policies over extreme concerns of inflation; policies dictated by a particular party. With food and other consumables becoming prohibitively expensive for many in November 2025, the trend is towards a $300 lunch under the current administration’s policies.
“Greatest victory in the history of military campaigns” and “very great defeat” and trumpeting a ‘great nation’ and that ‘those guys’ are the baddies and other hyperbole, that the US will be made great again once the internal threats (of the Western Forces) are removed… Like, those words are in the title of the controlling political body today.
A very stark scene is super disturbing and scary (you have been warned; check it out). It shows three uniformed – yet unmarked – soldiers filling a mass grave with plainclothes corpses. While the actors show no flag, these troops have had time to dig a large hole just outside the nation’s capital while a war is going on (not something you would expect the advancing WF to have time to do as they spearhead for Washington). Special note is made in movie too that 1) these soldiers do not want to be seen in a criminal act, and 2) Feds kill civilians. Further, these soldiers care an awful lot about where people are from, how American the movie’s protagonists are, killing one outright literally because “China”. Not the same as present “illegal immigrant” discourse, but with national paramilitary forces brandishing weapons behind masks and disappearing civilians, it seems to more than rhyme.
A final, and perhaps the weakest observation: Financial Times commentator Robert Armstrong tagged the term “TACO” for a president that “always chickens out” in our timeline. That the Fed military leaders caved when under siege, or that the president begs not to die, or how an entire government failed to uphold what are the present day oaths of office and legal framework of the Constitution, speaks to how much spine the movie’s Feds have. (Zealots not included.)
* War Crimes
Remember the Western Forces killing prisoners? No-capture orders? If a hypothetical military is faced with suicide bombers and diehard fanatics, with at least two legislative and justice systems that got the nation into such a mess, one might hypothetically sympathize with that policy. Hypothetical international courts can hash it out after the hypothetical war.
Lines Crossed, Lines Read Between
That is my hot take 🤷‍♂️ In the 2024 movie Civil War, the Western Forces are less liberal than the Feds are more MAGA.
Reading in between the lines? Looking at things with 20/20 hindsight? Blinded and biased and up too late typing this???
To quote the movie, “Once you start asking yourself those questions, you can’t stop. So we don’t ask. We record, so other people ask.” I am asking and asking you to ask too.
G’night for now. Cheers ~
Jimmy Chattin 