Family, friends, neighbors, co-workers are all at each others throats! But this did not start with Trump or Obama! This has been going on for decades! Now, we have 24 hour media and the internet to put gas on kindling flames!

You can have a Deplorable as a neighbor.

https://www.nps.gov/articles/mr-madison-s-war.htm

As they grew increasingly frustrated by the failure of President Jefferson’s and Madison’s policies of economic sanctions to win concessions from the British, a faction of congressmen known as the War Hawks began calling for more decisive and aggressive measures.

On June 1, 1812 President James Madison sent his war message to Congress. That message outlined what he believed to be America’s chief diplomatic grievances with Britain: impressment, the British Orders in Council, and Britain’s incitement of Indian warfare on America’s western frontier.

The Constitution gives the power to declare war to Congress. No Congress had exercised that power in the country’s nearly 25-year history. But in June 1812, the House and Senate narrowly approved the measure declaring war on the British. President Madison signed the Congressional war measures into law on June 18, 1812, marking the official commencement of the hostilities.

But enthusiasm for war against Britain was hardly unanimous. The vote in the House was 79 to 49; nearly four in ten representatives voted against the measure. The vote in the Senate was even closer, with 19 senators in favor and 13 opposed. It remains the closest vote in America’s five formally-declared wars.

And the vote occurred along strictly partisan lines. All 98 of the congressmen who voted for the war were Republicans. (Even within the Republican party, support for the war was hardly unanimous: one-quarter of Republicans either voted against the measure or abstained from the vote.) Not a single Federalist voted for the war. The partisan divisions led critics to later pronounce the War of 1812 "Mr. Madison's War."

I would probably answer in some ways, yes, in other ways, no.

I think unless one goes through each of the division points themselves and at a similar age (hence ability to comprehend first hand), it is impossible to answer any more clearly.

As an early 60 something, this is the worst I've experienced - but an older friend who was directly impacted by Vietnam thinks that it was worse back then.

more deaths, by far, than in any other american war, and more deaths than all other american wars combined until vietnam.


it's possible we get to that level of division, but we might not; and in any event, we're certainly not there yet.

And most folks don't have the martial spirit that existed then.

our civil war, and some others, have had convenient geographical borders, but that's not always the case.

remember that even in our civil war, there were border areas and families had to decide which side to send their kids to fight for.
many opted to send some kids to each side, so as to increase the chances of someone in the family being on the winning side, the better to hopefully save the rest.

plus, if it happens it won't be based on ideology. it will be based on race, ethnicity, etc.
they won't quiz people on politics, they'll just kill people with dark skin, spanish accents, and religious headgear.

We wade in and out of relative peace depending on whether the Nazis are hiding or marching.

It's easy to forget (or be unfamiliar with, if you weren't around then) the intense animosity arising from the civil rights and antiwar movements. There were riots in which whole neighborhoods burned down; protesters were regularly beaten up by police; there was Kent State; buildings were bombed; and RFK and MLK were assassinated. Some really, really ugly shit was going down; and people, including family members, became enemies just as now. I had screaming fights with my dad over the war, and I know a lot of other people who fought like wolverines with their families.

I think the divisions between the political parties is worse now than it was then, but the arguments between individuals with different viewpoints were just as intense and furious.

My father was extremely liberal, but he fucking hated the anti-war movement and "hippies" and still does to this day.

If I had a teacher who liked Trump i would have loathed him or her.

Thankfully my teachers were relatively liberal and I grew up in the exurban south.

But that 40% controls all three branches of government. The Founding Fathers' fear of the "tyranny of the majority" is stood on its head. We are suffering under the tyranny of the minority.

Particularly the right-wing groups. Until the availability of a dedicated cable “news” network and the internet, their voice had been somewhat diluted and diffused, easier to dismiss as a lunatic fringe, etc. But the web gave them everything from watering-hole message boards, to broad-based attack site like Breitbart. It’s empowered and emboldened the right wing to say the least.

As for the divide, it would appear that this current schism is deeper and more clear-cut than anything that came before in the U.S., in terms of scope. The “middle” or centrist setting has all but disappeared. You are either left or right, “with us or against us,” so goes an ideologue’s declaration.

The latest data informs that the sharpest political divides are between large urban concentrations and more rural regions.

The research indicates the further you live from your neighbor the more likely you are to be a Deplorable, i.e. a Trump partisan.