Speaker 1: You wake up before your alarm. No sunlight peaks through
Speaker 1: your window. It's far too early for that. You're confused
Speaker 1: for just a moment, and then you hear another explosion.
Speaker 1: It echoes in the night, rattling the walls in the
Speaker 1: window of your apartment. This is not the first bomb
Speaker 1: you've heard, and it sounds far enough away that you
Speaker 1: know the danger isn't a minute. That surprises you a
Speaker 1: little bit, the fact that you recognized it's not close.
Speaker 1: You realize you've now heard enough explosions to have a
Speaker 1: pretty good ear for them, and when they're close enough
Speaker 1: to worry about. It's weird how quickly life in a
Speaker 1: war zone becomes just life. You get up, there's no
Speaker 1: sense trying to get back to sleep. As you stumble
Speaker 1: over to the kitchen to grind some coffee, you hear
Speaker 1: the crack of rifle fire. It's distant, too far enough
Speaker 1: away that it sounds almost like firecrackers, but you know
Speaker 1: it's not. You feel the grinder, put on the top
Speaker 1: and press down. Nothing happens. You realize, belatedly your sleep
Speaker 1: fogged brain that the powers out again. You wonder which
Speaker 1: of the dozen different rebelent insurgents groups in your state
Speaker 1: might be responsible. You don't even bother to get out
Speaker 1: your phone and check the news. It doesn't really matter,
Speaker 1: and you've got shipped to do. It's still dark outside,
Speaker 1: and since you're already up, you might as well take
Speaker 1: advantage of the situation and beat the crowd to the
Speaker 1: grocery store. As you close and lock your door behind you,
Speaker 1: you try to ignore the pop and shatter of not
Speaker 1: so distant gunfire. There are days when you do feel
Speaker 1: like doing something, maybe even joining your friends, but most days,
Speaker 1: like today, you've got shipped to do. It's an election year.
Speaker 1: Every candidate is doing their level best to not call
Speaker 1: this what it is, a civil war. You heard that
Speaker 1: phrase out on the street, though, more and more every day.
Speaker 1: You reach a crosswalk and start to step across on
Speaker 1: the left. Your eyes are drawn to the massive bulk
Speaker 1: of a police bear cat as it trundles across the
Speaker 1: street parallel to you. A man sits up top in
Speaker 1: the couple up, his hands on a machine gun that
Speaker 1: for now has its nose pointed up in the air.
Speaker 1: He stares at you, and you try not to stare back.
Speaker 1: As you hurry along to the supermarket, you ask yourself
Speaker 1: the question you've asked almost every day for the last
Speaker 1: three years, How did it get this bad? Did that
Speaker 1: seem far fetched? You outlandish? If so, let me try
Speaker 1: to show you why the preceding passage might well be
Speaker 1: reality for millions of Americans startlingly soon if something isn't done.
Speaker 1: The Second American Civil War doesn't sound like a crazy,
Speaker 1: distant possibility to me, and it hasn't for a while.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans, and it's my job to help you
Speaker 1: see what I see. Two thousand sixteen was the first
Speaker 1: year I started seriously considering the possibility of a second
Speaker 1: American Civil War. It was the year I reported on
Speaker 1: the major protests surrounding the most contentious election in modern
Speaker 1: American history. I was there at the r n C
Speaker 1: in the d n C, and at both I saw
Speaker 1: tremendous hatred on display. I also traveled to a Rack
Speaker 1: in two thousand sixteen to report on the Siege of Mosel.
Speaker 1: But nothing I saw there, nothing I saw anywhere that
Speaker 1: year scared me more than watching Alex Jones speak on
Speaker 1: the first day of the RNC. These are not liberals
Speaker 1: welcome to It could happen here. The podcast where every
Speaker 1: season I take some fantastic, unlikely scenario and explain how
Speaker 1: it could happen, why it might be closer than you'd think,
Speaker 1: and how it will look when or if it comes Listen.
Speaker 1: It's subscribed on the I Heart Radio app, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts