America Is at War… With Itself

The guns aren’t aimed overseas anymore. From ICE raids to crumbling institutions and vanished jobs, America is waging war against its own people; and the casualties mount daily.

Guest article by Michael Cohen. Make sure to follow him on Substack for more by clicking here.

There was a time when the word “war” in America meant something you read about in a foreign dateline: Fallujah, Kabul, the jungles of Vietnam. Today the battlefield is closer to home. It’s in Chicago. It’s in Washington. It’s in Tallahassee classrooms, grocery store checkout lines, and yes, probably coming soon to your neighborhood. America is at war, but not with China, Russia, or some shadowy terrorist group. No, this is a civil war of values, fought against ourselves. And we’re losing.

The National Guard has been federalized in city after city—Los Angeles, Washington, soon Chicago and NYC—rolling down American streets in armored vehicles like it’s Baghdad in 2003. And here’s the crazy part: the “enemy” isn’t foreign fighters; it’s American citizens. The most recent ICE raid wasn’t at the border or on some cartel stronghold; it was at a Hyundai plant in Georgia, where South Korean immigrant workers making car parts were yanked out like criminals in front of their terrified coworkers. What message does that send? That America’s war isn’t on illegal entry, but on labor, on livelihood, on the very people whose sweat powers our economy.

Trump even doubled down with his theatrical poster: helicopters, fireballs, “Chipocalypse Now,” as if America were a Michael Bay film waiting for the big explosion. Governor Pritzker called him a wannabe dictator, and for once, the governor wasn’t exaggerating. Soldiers in the streets aren’t about safety. They’re about control. They’re about the photo op. And they’re about reminding ordinary Americans who’s really in charge.

Meanwhile, the institutions that once acted as a buffer between raw power and citizens are being shredded. Universities, dismissed as indoctrination centers, are hounded for producing educated graduates who might actually question authority. Law firms are smeared for defending the wrong clients. The Federal Reserve is pressured to doctor numbers until markets believe what politicians want them to. Judges are treated like political operatives instead of arbiters of law. Piece by piece, the scaffolding that holds up democracy is being pulled apart, and we’re supposed to smile and clap while it happens.

And while the system is busy dismantling itself, the Epstein files continue to ooze into the public sphere like toxic waste from a landfill. The names, the cover-ups, the casual intimacy between billionaires, politicians, and predators—it all reinforces the same ugly truth: power protects power. Justice drags its feet. Victims are left twisting in the wind while the elite keep clinking glasses at private clubs. The Epstein scandal isn’t just about sex crimes; it’s about rot, about a system so compromised it doesn’t know how to cleanse itself without self-destructing.

Then there’s health care—or whatever is left of it. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. decided the best way to lead the nation through a century of modern medicine was to blow up the foundation. Remove vaccine requirements for schoolchildren. Polio, measles, mumps, rubella—diseases we buried decades ago—are being reintroduced like a WHAM! greatest hits tour no one asked for. Florida went first, eliminating all vaccine mandates for children. Their Surgeon General, playing amateur philosopher, called mandates “slavery.” Slavery. That’s the level of discourse guiding decisions that will leave kids disabled or dead. Pediatricians warn we’re courting disaster. But warnings don’t matter in a government that prefers applause lines to science.

On the economic front, tariffs have become the quietest form of robbery in American history. Sold as a patriotic tool to “punish” foreign competitors, they punish you instead. School supplies, groceries, that Amazon package containing a Labubu on your doorstep—all cost more because tariffs are hidden inside every barcode. For working families, the difference between making rent and falling behind isn’t Chinese steel or foreign semiconductors; it’s the invisible tax slapped on every item in the checkout aisle. Economists call them inflationary pressures. I call them legalized pickpocketing, complete with a flag-waving speech at the end.

And then there’s the job market. August delivered a pathetic 22,000 jobs nationwide. The topline unemployment rate, 4.3%, looks tolerable—until you dig into the details. Black unemployment just jumped to 7.5%. That’s not just an economic figure; that’s a flare going off in the night sky. And for Gen Z, the numbers are even bleaker: double-digit youth unemployment, 14.3% for Black youth, 12.6% for Hispanic youth, with White youth faring slightly better but still locked in uncertainty. These young people were supposed to inherit the future. Instead, they’re watching AI vacuum up opportunities while landlords vacuum up paychecks. They laugh about it on TikTok because if they didn’t laugh, they’d riot.

So let’s take stock. Troops and ICE raids on American soil, this time at a Hyundai plant. Universities, law firms, the judiciary—attacked. Epstein’s shadow still hanging over the halls of power. Public health gutted, leaving children vulnerable to diseases their grandparents fought to eradicate. Tariffs bleeding wallets at every store. And a job market that writes off young people and Black Americans as collateral damage.

This isn’t war with China. It isn’t war with Russia. It’s war with ourselves. And here’s the bitter truth: in a war against yourself, even if you win, you lose.

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