Half of Americans anticipate a U.S. civil war soon

I don't listen to any news or watch TV and I don't use social media. Now that I don't consume any of it, I don't feel any of the fear or anger that the media talks about. I can't remember when I was last at peace as much as I am now. If everyone else would unplug from the hate-tainment machines they'd probably calm down too.

Linked pre-print: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.15.22277693v...

I found this interesting:

> more than 40% agreed that ″having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy″ and that ″in America, native-born white people are being replaced by immigrants.″

and

> Among 6,768 respondents who considered violence to be at least sometimes justified to achieve 1 or more specific political objectives, 12.2% were willing to commit political violence themselves ″to threaten or intimidate a person,″ 10.4% ″to injure a person,″ and 7.1% ″to kill a person.″

Here's most of the rest of the abstract:

> Design, Setting, Participants: Cross-sectional nationwide survey conducted May 13 to June 2, 2022; participants were adult members of the Ipsos KnowledgePanel.

> Main Outcomes and Measures: Weighted, population-representative proportions endorsing an array of beliefs about American democracy and society and the use of violence, including political violence, and extrapolations to the US adult population.

> Results: The analytic sample included 8,620 respondents; 50.6% (95% Confidence Interval (CI) 49.4%, 51.7%) were female; mean (SD) age was 48.4 (18.0) years. Two-thirds of respondents (67.2%, 95% CI 66.1%, 68.4%) perceived ″a serious threat to our democracy,″ but more than 40% agreed that ″having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy″ and that ″in America, native-born white people are being replaced by immigrants.″ Half (50.1%) agreed that ″in the next few years, there will be civil war in the United States.″ Among 6,768 respondents who considered violence to be at least sometimes justified to achieve 1 or more specific political objectives, 12.2% were willing to commit political violence themselves ″to threaten or intimidate a person,″ 10.4% ″to injure a person,″ and 7.1% ″to kill a person.″ Among all respondents, 18.5% thought it at least somewhat likely that within the next few years, in a situation where they believed political violence was justified, ″I will be armed with a gun″, and 4.0% thought it at least somewhat likely that ″I will shoot someone with a gun.″

Source is apparently a preprint (that is, not peer-reviewed) uploaded here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.15.22277693v...

> Participants: Cross-sectional nationwide survey conducted May 13 to June 2, 2022; participants were adult members of the Ipsos KnowledgePanel.

8,620 respondents, but I don't see how they were recruited or how potential bias was accounted for.

Given how weird some of the internet surveys have been in the past year, I don't take singular polls all that seriously. These polls seem to end up extremely skewed toward subjects who overestimate small probabilities.

For a reality check, consider that 1/8th of respondents said they would be willing to commit political violence themselves and 7.1% of respondents said they'd be willing to kill someone over politics.

> 12.2% were willing to commit political violence themselves ″to threaten or intimidate a person,″ 10.4% ″to injure a person,″ and 7.1% ″to kill a person.″

And to cap it off, 4% of respondents were pretty sure they were going to kill someone soon:

> and 4.0% thought it at least somewhat likely that ″I will shoot someone with a gun.″

Yeah, I don't think so. This feels like a survey of people who consume too much news and social media and have become increasingly disconnected from the reality on the ground.

Kind of a silly article designed to scare people. Let’s decide our differences over a match of Call of Duty

What was the last one for? “States’ rights”?