Of course it can. War can happen any time, anywhere.

I think the drug addiction crisis that they have is somehow preventing/delaying this to happen. But the elements for a civil war are there: weapons access, ideological intolerance, economical imbalance, ever-differing state and federal law and policies, corruption in government and the probable rise of a political group that lost the presidency causing the Capitol Attack out of resentment, between others.

Democracy in the USA feels like holding with pins. I see the country as conservative to far-right with very few space for other political ideologies.

Could it happen? Yes. There is a lot of anger in America. Will it happen in the near (10-15 years) future? No. Why? Watch any and all of the January 6th 2021 videos of the Capitol Riots. That looked like a bunch of alcoholic, mentally ill tailgate partiers tried to take over a nation. It got out of hand and went very, very bad. The only reason they did as much damage as they did, was because actual law enforcement reinforcements were not called in on time. They are just violent idiots who are old, out of shape, delusional about their abilities, and they did not have an actual plan. Civil war is not the immediate threat we face in the USA, it's the fascism of christianity from within our government that needs to be destroyed. We need a return back to sanity, back to a secular government.

I think that the US is primed to have a civil war. Ever since Reagan fucked the fairness doctrine in 1987, we've been getting more and more divided. Gonna sound like an old fogey here, but it used to be that everybody tuned into the same news, and watched the same anchors deliver the same updates about the same world events. We had differing opinions on world events, but we all agreed on what was and what was not reality.

We don't have that now. It's like two completely separate universes occupy the same physical space. In one universe, climate change is fueled by anthropogenic forces and is causing more and more catastrophic damage, viruses are real and vaccines are effective tools to combat them, and thousands of traitors tried to overthrow the government because their cult leader lost an election. In the other? Climate change isn't real, and also the Democrats have secret hurricane machines that they are using to punish Florida for being a red state, COVID isn't real, and also it's a super virus concocted in a lab in Wuhan at the request of Hillary Clinton, vaccines don't work, and also vaccines are secretly a government tool to kill people, and Jan 6th was a peaceful protest of patriots, and also it was a violent insurrection by Antifa.

We don't share the same reality with each other. In one reality, Democrats are basically similar to milquetoast conservatives from any other first world nation, and they care much more about maintaining the status quo than they do about making progress. In the other reality? Democrats are evil incarnate, and they're waging an active campaign to round up all of the patriots and send them to concentration camps, and they're also pedophiles and Marxists. In that reality, it's far more preferable to vote for a dead pimp than it is to vote for a standard, run-of-the-mill Democrat.

And it's not just the whole two-realities thing. Ever since Obama became president, the brains of a huge chunk of people in this country just broke. Some of the nicest-seeming people you'd ever met instantly turned into vile, hate-spewing racists, and started mass subscribing to every single conspiracy theory feed out there. That was 16 years ago. Their rhetoric has been getting more violent every year since. That's to say nothing of the huge increase in terrorist incidents since then - according to the CSIS:

The number of domestic terrorist attacks and plots against government targets motivated by partisan political beliefs in the past five years is nearly triple the number of such incidents in the previous 25 years combined

So yeah. I think that this country is primed for organized, mass violence. At this point, all that it's lacking is the organization. Thankfully, Donald Trump is an incredibly stupid man. I don't think he'd be capable of organizing people to that level. He can stoke their hatred, for sure. He can inspire the craziest among them to firebomb a mosque or shoot up a Democrat's office... but he ain't built to lead people. If someone who had even 1/10th of his prowess as a cult leader, but who was actually intelligent and had a tactical mind came along... hoo boy.

Of course it could happen. Do I think it will happen in the next two months as we get through election season? Nah.

I also don't think a civil war in modern days would look anything like it did in the 1860s. Aside from the obvious advance in weapons and tactics, there's no convenient clear line between one half and the other like there was with North/South. It would look more like civil wars do in other countries in the 21st century.

Short answer: yes

Longer answer: I would argue we’ve already had a few civil wars since the “War Between the States” in the 1860s. Reconstruction was arguably another civil war. The labor rights war of the early twentieth century included federal troops attacking organizing coal miners and federal agents along with private security forces attacking striking workers elsewhere. The violence of the civil rights movement (remember: the president had to call in the national guard to enforce integration) would also qualify as a civil war by some standards.

Listen to the first limited series of the podcast It Could Happen Here for an idea of how a more involved civil war could start. The idea is that there would not be clear battle lines drawn up because our divide now is more urban vs rural, and people in rural areas have opportunities to attack infrastructure that would have significant impacts on urban areas.

So I talked to a PhD who's work covered civil wars across the world, and asked about this. Turns out there are several signs you need to see which makes a civil war more likely. Most of which we haven't even gotten close to, because many of them are economic related and right now the US is still the single largest economy in the world where peoples standard of living is still very comfortable.

I asked ChatGPT to describe this and these are the highlights, in order of historical priority?

• Political instability and weak governance are present.
• There are deep ethnic, religious, or sectarian tensions.
• The economy is declining with high inequality.
• Persistent social unrest and widespread protests occur.
• External powers are interfering or supporting different factions.
• There is significant resource scarcity and competition.
• Militarization and proliferation of arms increase.
• Systematic human rights violations and repression take place.
• Society experiences strong ideological polarization.
• Demographic pressures such as rapid population growth or urbanization exist.
• The rule of law and justice systems are breaking down.
• Historical grievances and unresolved conflicts resurface.

Note that the US does have some of these, but not to the evident level that you saw in Rwanda, Sudan, Yugoslavia, Syria, Burundi, Eritrea, Somalia, Libya, Myanmar, Haiti, and others. In short, if you look at the indicators, although the US is indeed troubled, it's not troubled enough for people to hot the streets with more than riotous intent.

Alternate question..

What the fuck is a 'battleground' state, and why does the media even have the nerve to use that term? I mean I know what it basically means, they should stick with 'swing' state, instead of putting the word 'battle' into nutjob's heads just before an election.

I don't care what people's political opinions are, but we already have enough gun nuts out there, and at least a couple attempts on the former president's life.

You can't even feel safe sending your kids to school in numerous areas, and can't even always feel safe in a Walmart these days.

Are you sure we're not already in a civil war?

Nah... Americans may hate each other, but ultimately, unless there's a major irreconciliable internal struggle between two major social movements on

1. economic system and material conditions

2. foreign policy

3. Stability of gov't to maintain liberal rule

and its resulting instability...

I don't think there's gonna be another one

Something I talked about earlier in political discussions was that the Usa has a problem of neighborhoods not being as social as they used to be.

Fewer bars, ymca, gatherings. Neighbors stay inside more. Children do not play in the street so much. Very few adults walk in the streets ( compared to Europe). Religious attendance is down .

That makes grassroots and revolutionary fever hard except on the internet. And the internet is showing it sort of sucks doing that, getting people outdoors, regardless of their creed, religious or political beliefs.

All that show up are usually elites , and some people in cities.

If you look at any modern revolution, there are healthy neighborhood dynamics driving it allowing a parallel bottom up growth

In the USA, People will probably have heated comments on social media, except in some small areas of cities, with only a few casualties

I don't see how you'd have enough parity between two sides, whichever side the military picks would just be the overt over dog and maaaaaaybe you could have some kind of armed mountain resistance or something, but it would be more a rebellion than a civil war.

Sure, it can. But if it doesn't happen right after the election, or on January 6th, it's not happening anytime soon.

Any country can experience civil war but it requires certain material developments. The US would require a substantial breakdown in shared interests for that to happen. Not just partisan frustrations, there would need to be a fundamental economic split so severe that it pitted states or regions against one another and they could actually act on that. This would almost certainly have to coincide with a weakening of the federal government as well, where the states/regions in question need to push against the federal in order to go in their own direction, for their own interests.

The US Civil War had a material basis like this. The South of course sought to maintain slavery and this was the primary issue, but why was it such a sticking point and conflict in the first place? One clue is to look at what happened to production after the South lost (hell yeah): their plantations were bought up by Northern capitalists and run at a profit. The landless poor, which included basically every freed slave, were forced to work there for very little pay while now needing to pay their new landlords for housing. They became the most abused of the proletariat and racism was kept alive for their marginalization in this market. The ascendant northern capitalists had been doing this kind of thing in bits and pieces and by supporting the halt in any new slave states. The Southern planter ruling class knew their days were numbered and, seeing existential crisis, attempted to carve out a country for themselves to prevent that extinction.

You can imagine that sort of thing developing again during prolonged crisis. Some states and regions may develop very different economies and their ruling class interests may become so at odds that it leads to land grabs, assertions of independence, etc. But that would be a prolonged crisis that changed fundamental regional economics and national economics. It's not necessarily unlikely but it would take decades.

Yup, it can happen anywhere. The only question is if it will, and if so, when.

It won't be like people think it would be, but it's entirely possible.

No. For practical reasons. Who is your enemy? Are we going shirts and skins? With the American civil war and most wars it's easy to determine who your enemy is. Everyone who lives south of that river.

The friend of certainty is time. One day perhaps then we won't even call ourselves Americans. I doubt the 1860s will happen again anytime soon. Maybe something closer in scale to Blair Mountain.

Look to history. We've had two. Look at the words explaining the necessity of independence in the declaration of independence. Those were not hollow words but detailed a long series of abuses. Then look to the causes of the Civil War. A perfidious institution anathematic to the very core ideal of the nation, that all men are created equal.

Our times doubtless have our problems but the do not meet nearly the standard set in the past.

Arguably the US is already in early stages of one. In fact, a model US themselves produced forecasts collapse and a likely civil war in the near future. https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/model-predicting-united-states-disorder-now-points-to-civil-war/12365280

Just based off how comfortable Americans are, no.

The better answers in these comments already explain the main reason the answer is no, but I want to add how impractical it is given the purple reality of most communities.

In my townhome community, there are about 33-33-33 split between Harris, Trump, and unvoting across 17 units (most unvoting being green cards like my wife). If Trump straight up announced a civil war, would my neighbor go to war with me? Extremely unlikely, especially since one of the Trumpsters adore my kids and would probably shut down anyone trying shit.

I think most modern day civil wars are military coops, and that just isn't happening here. You might see some militia and unrest, maybe another Jan 6, but that's not the same as a real civil war.

No do I think an Al-Qaeda like terrorist organization established by Christian nationalists gets formed that's already here. A Civil War is only when to established governments fight over territory. And no military in the entire world can go Toe to Toe with the full force of the US Military with conventional Warfare. Maybe the National Guard in the couple Southern States Splinter off but the way soldiers are trained in the National Guard is they swear in allegiance to the US Constitution not the governor or president.

If the Southern States did try again it would be like the 1860 South fighting the 21st century North.

No