I'll admit, that is a major concern of mine too. But at this point I don't see another option. Our own governments (not just US mind you) have actively demonstrated to us that they revel in this same political discourse. That they thought they could wield the fire instead of stamping it out. So who is left? Corporations? Same story there I'm afraid. So as I see it, the systems we ,,should'' rely upon have failed us and thus we must take manner into our own hands. I think this strategy is infinitely better than the civil war people so eagerly discuss. But like the SAO/VR story from yesterday, I don't think people are actively internalizing the horrors that such an event would bring. So I'm going to keep my hope that we can solve things in a civil manner (which also means we can break the cycle). We don't need everyone to make these changes, but just enough.
The Democrats could abandon neoliberalism and put identity politics on the back burner and pass Universal Health Care, Child Care and College, along with a large boost in infrastructure spending in the midwest, and a reduction in certain obvious issues of regulatory capture (importing drugs from Canada and Europe) and tax hikes on the rich. That'd do a lot to fix the average condition of the worker in the United States, and many of these proposals are actually supported by a majority of Republican voters.
The reality is that we've had a divided population ever since the 90s, and this is by the design of both political parties in the United States, because we have two different competing corporate parties now. And the way we've been provoked to fight each other didn't start with the Russians, we were doing it back in the 90s with Limbaugh and Bill Clinton. They may have thrown a little gas on the fire, but we lit it a long time ago.
And trying to shift responsibility onto individuals doesn't really work. That's like trying to solve climate change by having everyone recycle harder and plays into the old individualistic puritan work ethic mythology which it should be obvious by now doesn't fix anything and just gets us yelling at each other and policing each other.
The government is going to have to change, and corporations are going to have to change and billionaires are going to have to recognize that unrestrained plundering of the economy will wind up tearing the country apart.
And I don't see any way out of this where everyone remains civil and nothing fundamentally changes. The fact that the best solution you've got is to just remind people to be civil at all costs suggests to me that we're going to hit some kind of really bad situation.
And the fact that the proposals that I suggest in my first paragraph are likely to catch a lot of flak and a whole lot of pushing for the status quo and expanations of how those ideas are fundamentally unthinkable and politically unreasonable are why I think we're heading for violence. If nothing changes then the pressure cooker just slowly continues to boil without any release and lecturing the people who are getting angry about the situation that they're not being civil isn't going to stop it blowing up eventually.
Yeah... I have no faith in the general public either. This is the same public that went full insane by reading grainy jpegs on Facebook and watching obviously terrible "news" networks.
Positive change requires much more time, effort and leadership. Changing in negative ways just rely on fear and stoking strong emotions, it's much faster and effective.
I think it's possible to fight back with positive changes but those take decades to generations to actually take hold while requiring political support throughout so plans set in motion can actually reap benefits by then. Any political thwarting from adversarial forces and those long-term plans just grind to a halt or are reversed.
It's an uphill battle, for years and years to come.