...Ms Selinger predicts that civil war is inevitable in the United States. I assume she means literally, but she doesn't say. Clearly we're headed for a crisis of some form. But in fairness, the U.S. has been headed in this direction for a long time. Donald Trump as President of the U.S. is a symptom of tose forces, I believe, not the cause. That is, I think the forces that are pushing the U.S. toward some sort of end game allowed such a man as Donald Trump to be elected President. But to say that war is what Trump wants is, in my judgment, stretching the Seilinger's point. I doubt he necessarily wants a literal war. But he's okay pushing the buttons that may cause one as a side effect.
A few years ago I saw a novel by Orson Scott Card called "Empire". It posits a civil war in a politically divided USA, from which emerges a bipartisan candidate. OSC was very obviously modelling the future of the USA as transitioning in some way similar to the way the Roman Republic transformed into an Empire, with that bipartisan president modelled on the first Roman Emperor, Augustus.
I don't see this as likely, simply because at the moment the supporters of the two main parties seem to be too opposed to each other to accept the idea of the parties agreeing on much at all, let alone something as significant as a Presidential candidate.
The model I see for the USA's future, rather more worryingly, is that of Spain in 1936. Spain had a democracy through the 1930s which more or less worked, except that the voting system favoured large coalitions, leading to steadily more extreme positions at each end of the political spectrum.
Then, four months after a left-wing coalition won power, the army attempted a coup which only partly succeeded. They captured a few cities in the south of Spain and had widespread support among the wealthier peasant farmers of the north. But the large cities and central and eastern Spain supported the government.
Both sides had foreign support, and both sides indulged in bloodshed at the expense of people in their own controlled territory who were suspected of supporting the other side. Over the course of three years of fighting the rebels gained control of the country, installing General Franco as the leader of Spain.
In the decades that followed, it wasn't a good career move to be known as someone who'd supported one of the parties of the Republican government. But on the other hand, giving Spain a generation with essentially no politics seems to have allowed the political parties to reset, meaning that since democracy was restored it has remained politically stable.
The problem is that I just don't know that the world can indulge the USA in a three year civil war followed by 30+ years of dictatorial rule to allow political passions to cool.
