An Uncivil War

Back in October, President Donald Trump retweeted a quote from Robert Jeffress Jr., an American Southern Baptist pastor and a frequent contributor to Fox News Channel, from one of his regular appearances there: “If the Democrats are successful in removing the president from office, I’m afraid it will cause a Civil War-like fracture in this nation from which this country will never heal.”

In a year of kerfuffles, it was just another tweet that caused a brief dust storm. It seemed shocking that someone was conjuring the specter of the Civil War in defense of the president’s political future — and, more worrisome, that the president himself seemed to endorse that view with his retweet.

In a follow-up interview, Mr. Jeffress explained that he wasn’t actually calling for armed resistance: “I was very precise in the language I used. I was not advocating or predicting an actual civil war if Trump is removed. What I said was such removal would cause a fracture in our country like our country experienced after the Civil War.”

But as 2020 dawns, on the heels of the third impeachment in U.S. history, ushering in a year to be dominated by a presidential election, to be held in a country split nearly in half by politics and raw from the conflict, past and future, it feels like a war of some kind is already raging. It’s a war of words, but that doesn’t make it less combative. Call it an uncivil war.

It matters to all Americans. But it matters in particular on the South Fork, since a key combatant in the war is U.S. Representative Lee Zeldin, who has been a stalwart supporter of President Trump, standing out even among a Republican Party that largely has been united behind its troubled standard-bearer.

Breitbart has suggested that “no bigger star” emerged from the impeachment drama on the Republican side. In fact, it quotes House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy calling him “invaluable” to Mr. Trump’s defense: “Since Democrats launched the inquiry, Lee has used the skills he learned as an Army judge advocate to dismantle Adam Schiff’s false, hyper-partisan narrative.”

The conservative site — in a 4,500-word profile in December that felt like confirmation of Mr. Zeldin’s rising status in the world of “America First” media — says he now has a nickname, “The Legend of Zeldin,” playing on a popular video game title. That’s because “he’s a total warrior for the president and the movement as a whole,” according to Cliff Sims, a former White House adviser. The profile is full of adjectives: tenacious, hard-working, hard-charging, a brawler.

The other side has adjectives for Mr. Zeldin as well, the most memorable coming from a Washington Post columnist this fall: “lickspittle.” It’s telling that a wordsmith needed to go to the early 1800s to find a label strong enough to characterize Mr. Zeldin’s slavish dedication to Mr. Trump.

More important, he has been an active participant in the war of words. While he laments that the Democratic Party — or “Democrat Party,” which is the dismissive way right-wing pundits insist on referring to the other side — is catering to an “extreme, activist, hate-filled base,” his own language is unfailingly combustible. His colleagues in the House on the other side of the aisle are “crazy,” “weak,” “whining,” “stupid,” “disgusting.” He has been a vessel for the Republican counterarguments, no matter how empty, and amplified the contempt they’ve shown for both decorum and the truth.

Like the would-be monarch he dutifully serves, however, he just keeps winning. There’s certainly reason to believe that both will be reelected in 2020. The 1st District remains a snapshot of the country as a whole: deeply divided and partisan. The rhetoric is working, and there’s no reason to believe civility will reappear in the coming political campaign. Brace for more of the same, and worse.

Something has been lost in all this chaos, and it’s something fundamental. The crucible of government used to turn out better product, because it was debated for the sake of compromise. Today, it’s a sum-zero game that requires a winner and a loser. The new year 2020 will bring plenty of the former —and it’s hard to shake the notion that, with this uncivil war, we’re all the losers.