Yeah, that's what I was thinking as well. Yes, there is a bit of the whole "people complaining that the end is near for hundreds of years" thing a la https://xk

Yeah, that's what I was thinking as well. Yes, there is a bit of the whole "people complaining that the end is near for hundreds of years" thing a la https://xkcd.com/1227 https://xkcd.com/1227, but at the same time there's a hell of a lot more talk about it now than there was even a short while ago. By the way, for the non-Americans 1861 was the year the American Civil War started. Eleven states seceded from the Union to fight with their lives for perpetual human slavery of Black people: Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. Brother fought against brother in an immense war. Almost one million people died, in a small nation of thirty one million. Today the death toll would be comparable to killing every human soul in New York City, and not in a humane or quick way either: most civil war soldiers took at minimum hours to die, bleeding to death, after being stabbed or shot by a fellow countryman at close range in the middle of a battlefield. The US government, after the war, estimated that two thirds of Union soldiers died slowly over a period of weeks due to disease from wounds. By the way, this incomprehensible massacre claimed the lives of more soldiers than all other American wars combined, from the Revolutionary War to the War of 1812 to World War I and II to the Vietnam War. In two days at the Battle of Shiloh, more Americans died than in all previous American wars combined. The modern-day equivalent to the civil war would be killing every soul in the following places: San Francisco, Detroit, Seattle, Memphis, Denver, Boston, Washington DC, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami, and the entire US states of Vermont and Wyoming. Remember, all this fighting was close combat, hand-to-hand, brother vs brother, with most people taking weeks to die from their wounds. The scale of the American Civil War is pretty difficult to comprehend. Every time a news anchor suggests that we are on the brink of civil war, I try to think of the truly terrifying reality that would be. The fact that political dialogue in America has died and both sides are furiously pitted against each other is positively horrifying, and I hope (and believe, for now) that we are very, very far from a civil war.