Things are very heated right now certainly. But there are still a lot of people (a LOT) of people who just want to live their lives and are not going to literally wage war on people in their own country.
It's not a zero percent chance but it's near zero.
I certainly hope so, but one side (which I won't name because I think it's obvious enough) doesn't seem content with just living their lives, they want to force themselves on the lives of others as well so that the whole country will be just as shitty as they are and then they won't have to feel so bad about it.
Yeah that part is scary. But even that side (which we won't name) has a significant number of people who, while they have bad opinions and want bad things, don't actually want the level of insanity and violence we have seen from supporters of a certain unnaturally colored presidential figure.
I have real hope that people are figuring the problem out soon enough that they can solve some of this through increased voter turnout and higher engagement. If we'd gone another decade of complacency we'd be in a lot worse spot because many legitimate avenues of combating oppressive policies might have gotten blocked. But as it is, people can still effect change. That makes actual civil war unlikely, at least for now.
Most americans think the "sides" are red vs blue, which is absolutely 100% wrong in all ways. So as long as that belief holds true a civil war is impossible.
I don't think we'll see something like the first American civil war, where it's a declared war with two armies fighting, but rather an increase in vigilante and extra-judicial action with an increasingly political bent. In fact, I think we're already seeing the start of this, with little jumpstart paramilitary groups popping up (thus far with little organization or success, thankfully). I think the mass shootings that seem so commonplace now will only get worse. I think the Republican party will continue to silently voice their support through an unwillingness to bring the hammer down on them.
I think all of this will continue until eventually we see another, better organized, more militant attempt at a coup, and either they'll be successful, and we'll experience a major governmental shift, probably towards fascism, or they'll be unsuccessful and the response will be swift and severe and we'll stamp out all of that BS, or they'll be unsuccessful but we won't really do anything to stop it from happening again, and it'll reoccur again until we do.
Don't hate me for this, but American news always reminds me of the Handmaid's Tale and how some people have taken an inspiration from it to make it a reality. With the abortion bans, anti Lbgtq+, the attempted 'coup', .... It's starting I guess.
It feels kind of ridiculous, honestly. So much of the shit that's happened in the last 6-8 years feels like something you'd see in a really low budget movie and slam it for in reviews, for the entirely unbelievable plot and too overt villains. There's no subtlety about it anymore; things that used to be whispered are now shouted from the rooftops and a frustratingly loud minority applauds them while the sensible people quietly stay inside posting angrily on social media. I am just as guilty of that as anyone else.
I don't think it will devolve to a shooting war like 150 years ago, mainly because ordinary Americans have too much going on to want to send the army to preserve the Union. I can see the Conservative states saying "Do things our way or we're leaving!" And the rest of the country saying "Bye! Good luck running a country without our tax revenue!"
I definitely do get the feeling Liberal/Left Americans (inb4 "liberals arent leftists!!!," true but the particular issues I'm referencing are things liberals and leftists mostly agree on) and Conservative Americans have different, incompatible, moral systems where a compromise can't be reached.
I think it's possible but not probable. It's not like we're already seeing widespread squabbles or serious secession talk (ultimately I don't think the war would be fought on state lines but I do think secession talk would start happening before war breaks out.) Then again something like Trump getting put behind bars could change everything.
This is the plot of Empire by Orson Scott Card