Consider a scenario where the government is increasingly turned into a mexican standoff between completely entrenched branches of government. Supreme court is completely doing its own thing, the president starts abusing emergency powers to circumvent a ceaselessly filibustering congress and senate. Nothing gets done, and the country starts suffering from neglect and mismanagement.

It wouldn't be unheard of for a military coup to occur in such circumstances, in fact, it's a rough parallel to Julius Caesar's coup d'etat, which resulted in a civil war because some people didn't like the idea of having Caesar as a dictator and wanted to remain a republic, even if it was incredibly corrupt and dysfunctional.

Whether that is realistic today in the united states is another thing.

I didnt think a land war in Europe was a realistic thing in today's world, but here we are.

- is your proposed "military coup" a "civil war"?

- This entire discussion is fruitless b/c no two of us have the same definition (or even a clear conception) of the term "civil war". And we have for reference only past civil wars (especially the USA's war between the states).

- We could speculate loosely using and poor surveys unleashed on the great unwashed masses (and us) by surveyors interested less in their agenda than in raw screen-clicks. Instead why not pass by this article, leaving it to dry up and blow away in the dessicating winds of e-space?

I do agree that speculation is sort of pointless. I think circumstances may increase or decrease the likelihood of such an event, and circumstances look like they are more conducive to one now than in 1992, but I don't think you can say that when such-and-such happens, civil war is almost inevitable.

Trump is talking about running in 2024 because it's the only way he can escape being destroyed by January 6 and various related legal problems.

Now, Trump isn't a general of an army. Yes, he was commander in chief, but the army would (I presume) not have followed him to the extent of obeying illegal orders. But if Trump wins and gets increasingly legally cornered, he's going to try to find a way out, no matter what laws it breaks, and some of those ways are going to tear the country apart.

First, civil wars in fact happen despite the above. Second, badly trained soldiers go to wars and then commit horrible atrocities there.

[1] From https://www.gwern.net/docs/history/s-l-a-marshall/1988-spill...:

> His surviving field notebooks show no signs of statistical compilations that would have been necessary to deduce a ratio as precise as Marshall reported later in "Men Against Fire".

For those still reading, the controversial aspects that grandmczeb speaks of (and which Grossman has addressed) is discussed here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.L.A._Marshall#Controversies

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.L.A._Marshall#Research_metho...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.L.A._Marshall

Seeing the kind of insurrectionists that tried to take over the Capitol in 2021, I'll say the bar is very low. If there's a civil war, it will probably be an astroturfed takeover so the worst people can hold even more power.

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

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/grou...