alt Hacker News> > the US erupting into a civil war within 5 years, as they seem somewhat to have lost touch with reality.
When your material needs are satisfied then only ideological battles remain to be won.
And having lots of material stuff you have plenty to throw at the enemy.
It's already happening. People are willing to forego their material needs and harm the country and themselves to 'own' and defeat the other side.
The only hope is that the ideological wars become so scattered and around so many topics and centers of power that it's not 70m people vs. 70m people or that the ideological wars are slow that people realize that they come with a loss of quality of life and material wealth and rebalance towards the latter instead of pursuing the 'owning the other side' doctrine
I think effectively all empirics go against this notion, the only real counterexample I can think of is the Troubles. People living comfortable lives don't want to die and the ideology usually routes around that: look how morality has been evolving wrt the notion of 'sacrifice for the common good' - and we expect people will sacrifice their lives for their perception of the common good? doubt it