American democracy had near-death experience a year ago

[Black Aeronaut]

I feel that part of the issue at hand here is that this is something that will eventually necesitate a major conflict - e.g.: The American Civil War - in order to resolve.

But the problem with that is that this is not an issue where geogrpahical location and political boundaries plays a deciding role in the matter. It's like what Rage Against the Machine wrote in a song: There be no shelter here, The Front lies everywhere.

And thus you have the situation now. While there is an Us-vs-Them scenario, Us and Them are everywhere. There is no North and South like there was before. And without a physical line of demarkation, most folks are loath to let the conflict get to the point where you would have a formal declaration of some sort of conflict.

Instead, we're going to have a long, steady series of more localized flare-ups where authoritarians clash with liberals, much like the events that led up to the Kenosha Shootings.

The unfortunate thing is that I don't believe this was avoidable, because this is a byproduct of the progress into and through the Information Age. Anyone, anywhere can get whatever message anyone else is pushing. And so you have people with wildly differing political views living right next door to each other.

There be no shelter here.
The front lies everywhere.