In our times, a destructive force has emerged in the American political system. This force --- or spirit -- should be understood as the re-emergence onto center stage of what drove the United States to polarize, break apart, and fight a bloody Civil War a century and a half ago. This destructive force is damaging our nation now just as it did then. By looking at the striking and non-trivial parallels between the destructive patterns of the two eras, we can perceive --as with Magic Eye images-- a figure emerging from the apparently haphazzard lines in our daily newspapers.  The more clearly we perceive this destructive spirit at work in America today, the better able we will be to combat and defeat it.