After the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol, academics and journalists have proliferated took seriously the possibility of further political violence in the US And polls suggest Americans are worried about that, too. In a December University of Massachusetts Amherst Survey62 percent of respondents said they were at least slightly concerned about violence in the 2024 presidential election.
In her new book “How Civil Wars Start: And How To Stop Them” the political scientist from the University of California in San Diego writes Barbara F. Walter goes one step further. After spending her career studying civil wars abroad, she writes, “We’re closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.” It’s a bold suggestion, and on this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, we question it . Sure, America is polarized, but is it headed for war?
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