On angry minds – The Economist:

‘“American politics has often been an arena for angry minds,” the political scientist Richard Hofstadter wrote 60 years ago in his classic essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Yet across many eras, this discourse of “heated exaggeration, suspicion and conspiratorial fantasy” festered largely on the fringe. Then the internet made the fringe accessible to everyone, amplifying dissonance and disinformation.’

(…)

‘On the evidence available so far, Mr Crooks’s motives and political views are largely a mystery. News outlets reported that he was registered as a Republican but gave a $15 donation to a liberal political action committee, the Progressive Turnout Project, in January 2021. He apparently grew up in middle-class circumstances and made little impression on schoolmates.
The online far right has already invented a profile of him that fits their world view, however. Minutes after authorities released the shooter’s identity, a myriad of fake Instagram accounts appeared under his name with invented biographies that describe Mr Crooks as transgender, Jewish and a Black Lives Matter supporter. They and other influencers cited a comment Mr Biden reportedly made on a private call to donors last week: “We’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”’

(…)

‘Destiny, a leftist social-media commentator, told his 250,000 X followers that Mr Trump and his supporters will “reap what they sow, and I’m here to watch the harvest”. Meanwhile, on the right, a post in a Florida Proud Boys Telegram channel depicts Mr Trump with blazing red eyes above a banner headline: “THIS IS WAR!!!”’

Read the article here.

Civil war seems to be in the air. And for a while already, see here.

And the fringe became mainstream.

But for civil war the dissolution of the army is necessary. Yes, when the unraveling begins, it’s most probably a matter of days not of weeks. See Afghanistan.

The end of the American army doesn’t appear to be imminent.

And civil war? Despite alle the inequalities in the US, too many people have too much to lose to engage in violence that is more than a frivolity.