The lesson isn't "this should be normal" or "don't worry about it", but that the underlying dynamics -- political, social, economic, media -- are so damned consistent. The dynamics are systemic. Which means it's quite helpful to see where and when the dager signs are reappearing.

For me, the watershed moment was reading the opening paragraphs of A.H.M. Joness, Augustus. The politicaal divides and platforms of 40 BCE look exactly like those of the 1960s (when Jones waas writing0 or 2010s, when I read his words.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6i2h0e/ahm_jon...

Bolsonaro was stabbed in Brazil just months ago. Congressional Republicans had someone come to their baseball game and shoot at them. There have been all those assassinations involving Russia, as well. There was that relative of NK dictator Kim's that was poisoned. And that's just recent news, if I actually researched it we'd have a long list. You don't have to go that far back to remember things like President Reagan being shot.

I suppose you might say those are just attempts, but that's more a reflection of better security details. The underlying willingness of people to murder others over politics is still evident from the attempts.

Regarding civil wars, I would think you'd know about Syria at least. Wikipedia gives me 17 civil wars since 2000. We could roughly triple that if you want me to cut off anything from the 60s or before:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civil_wars

If the only political assassination you're aware of is JFK and the only civil war is the US civil war, which is the only way I can come up with those cutoff dates, then I submit that you might want to look at more world news.

You think the examples are all before the 60s? There were some very prominent political assassinations during the 60s, Watergate happened during the 70s, etc.

The 70s were over 40 years ago.

I posted above, but I see no reason to limit things to the USA and I see no reason to limit assassinations to only the successful ones. Just because politicians have better security and actually thwart more assassination attempts, that doesn't mean that the underlying willingness to murder people over politics has gone anywhere.

There are plenty of close calls to show that the schemes were serious: Bolsonaro was stabbed, Reagan was shot, etc.