This is Why I Think We Actually, Literally, May Be On the Verge of Civil War

Because a significant number of people cannot even bring themselves to treat family and long-time friends as a part of the human race.

Video about this here.

Years ago, sometime in the mid-1980s, there was a mini-series, North and South. It was an television program that tried to balance the record on both sides, using a fictional story of two families, and their experience. I watched it, in part, as I was also enrolled in a course on Civil War and Reconstruction, as part of my degree.

Side Note - my professor, a gentle and kindly man with an impish sense of humor, said one day about the series, "I just can't see how the South could have produced so much cotton - they couldn't spare any to cover the lady's chests." Well, there were a lot of heaving, exposed bosoms in the story.

It was kinda cheesy, but did reference the events of that time fairly well. Neither side came out as complete villains, or heroes. Just people, doing the best they could under the circumstances.

What was interesting about it was the comparison between two of the main characters, one a secessionist firebrand from the South, the other (played by Kirstie Alley - very good performance, if a little over-the-top), an abolitionist who, after her husband is killed at Harper's Ferry (a Black man), descends into madness.

Well, to be fair, neither of the two fanatics were all that emotionally or mentally stable.

The fanaticism was what fascinated me - the way those two were incapable of seeing the logic or arguments of the opposing side. Most others had opinions, but, in that story, it was the extreme radicals that pushed the war to happen.

Sometimes, I see that same fanaticism at play today.