As tensions in Washington ratchet toward the possible impeachment of President Donald Trump, dark matters are suddenly part of the discussion. “If the Democrats are successful in removing the president from office,” Rev. Robert Jeffress told the gang at Fox & Friends Weekend on Sunday, “I’m afraid it will cause a civil war-like fracture from which our country will never heal.” Trump posted the comments to his Twitter feed overnight, and Washington reacted immediately to the ominous invocation of civil war in the United States.

Some very frightening folks on the radical right reacted as well. The Oath Keepers, one of the largest antigovernment militias in the country—claiming tens of thousands of present and former law enforcement officials and military veterans among its members—doubled down on the president’s admonition, tweeting: “The term ‘civil war’ is increasingly on people’s tongues. And not just ‘cold civil war’—full-blown ‘hot’ civil war. Fact is patriots consider the left to be domestic enemies of the constitution bent on the destruction of the Republic.”



So-called serious people may consider this kind of assertion to be extreme, even crazy. It’s neither. As impeachment proceedings gain speed, Trump is getting backed into a corner, and Trump gets aggressive when cornered. He’s already prepping his followers for a wider “us” versus “them” conflict, tweeting last weekend: “They are trying to stop ME, because I am fighting for YOU.”



With Republicans in control of the Senate, it remains unlikely that the president will be forced from office by anything besides an electoral defeat next year. It’s doubtful he’ll go away quietly in any event. Trump’s now-jailed former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, concluded his testimony to Congress earlier this year with a warning: “I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also publicly aired concerns that the president might contest a close election, telling the The New York Times, “If we win by four seats, by a thousand votes each, he’s not going to respect the election. We have to prepare for that.”



You know who is prepared for that? Lone wolves, domestic terrorists, white supremacists, and militiamen on the far-right fringes who have long trafficked in an expansive body of published manifestos and propagandist fiction. Theirs is a kind of sick pop culture, constantly updated and running parallel to the mainstream, that fully accounts for apocalyptic race wars and nationalist-driven coups d’etat. Those steeped in this body of literature are primed to expect the moment where their rhetorical “shit” hits the real-life “fan.” Many hope this will happen in their lifetimes. Many others expect to participate in this great reckoning when it does. It’s all written down in the stories they tell one another.

