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

Having just read about the Spanish Civil War, I can see how this will potentially play out.

It will begin with a high profile assassination, then the extreme right will use the protests that will follow as justification for escalating violence, similar to the BLM protests. More violence. Maybe another high profile killing (on either side). Tit-for-tat murders begin, as they have in various government collapses around the world, especially in the 20th century.

The extreme left will undoubtedly respond in various ways beyond protests as tensions grow and the right will use whatever happens as propaganda to enrage their already agitated base. Whacko conspiracy theories and disinformation will make Trump’s term seem like the golden age of truth. Moderate conservatives, moderate liberals and disengaged independents won't know what to believe.

Meanwhile, in Congress, the conservatives who gain control in 2022 will grind the federal government to a halt with hearings and procedural moves. Then they’ll shut down the government with the budget. For months.

While the federal government is incapacitated, there will be a huge right-wing rally in some red state with full-throated attacks on the left. The ramped up crowd will head off afterwards and destroy a bunch of businesses and homes of people they suspect as being “pedophiles”. There will be violence and killings, recorded and shared freely as conservatives celebrate, similar what happens with Kyle Rittenhouse's actions. The state’s governor and local law enforcement will make minimal effort to prevent it and results in no prosecutions, and the fed response will be slow, as usual, and ineffective despite presidential condemnation.

This inspires other big events – full on Nuremberg style rallies – all over the country with similar results. Soon there will be skirmishes in the streets of major cities. The propaganda will be out of control, with front page stories, prime time videos and millions of social media posts filled with dead children and other atrocities, real or imagined.

Then it will really hit the fan when a group of black or Latino protestors attack a group of random white people who they associate with the right-wing. This causes irrational fear among the white population, and seemingly overnight, every other white “liberal” across the country will become suspicious or outright fearful of anyone of color. Mothers will pull their children from schools, or insist on “temporary” segregation for their child’s safety. Who knows what those children of color might do. The violence ramps up as POC communities are targeted, with the justification of “proactive self-defense” Law enforcement does nothing beyond platitudes and Uvalde like responses to shootings. They may even be at the forefront of the effort.

Fast forward and the 2024 election is fucking chaos. The entire right-wing will now accept nothing less than a win in literally every race, and it will be a presidential landslide anyways, because the Republicans are “pro law enforcement”, which, by this time means enforcement targeting mostly people of color and other “potentially dangerous leftists”. Americans have shown the memory of a goldfish and are easily scared. With violence spreading across the country, they’ll react by voting conservative, similar to after 9/11.

Then the right will have full control of all branches of government and start to pass all the laws they want. In addition to their current agenda, they will pass laws which essentially allows legalized vigilantism and an Amendment which cancels presidential term limits and other restrictions. Trump is pardoned.

California and other blue states respond, but the authoritarians in charge this time aren’t as stupid as Trump, learned the lessons he taught about the fragility of our laws, and use the power of the federal government to cripple the left through various voting restrictions intended to remove Democrats. It will all be “legal” and “constitutional” according to the right-wing SCOTUS. Eventually, the Democratic party will be officially declared an illegal organization because of its support for immoral lifestyles. The more the people rebel, the harder the states and feds crack down.

Then, it’s all a matter of rounding up the remaining resistance and the country becomes a de facto authoritarian regime. That’s when politicide turns into policide.

This is all a very probable future. We'll know it's starting with that first assassination. Look for it.

I can only assume it's that low because people tend not to think very hard about poll questions, so are considering only some narrower-than-the-actual-question version of it that they've replaced it with in their heads. Or else a whole lot of people are very honest and don't think they'd be able to actually do it—should, yes, but would? Doubtful enough that they'd answer "no" to the question.

I suspect it's the former because I doubt that many people would be open and introspective enough to admit they don't think they'd have the stomach to do things they think they should do. Try another angle with some extreme but plausible hypothetical scenarios rather than such a general question, and I bet that number shoots way up.