Are we on the verge of Civil War II?

“Folks keep talking about another civil war. One side has about 8 trillion bullets, while the other side doesn't know which bathroom to use.”

The words — actually a

2019 Facebook post — are those of then-Iowa Republican congressman Steve King, loosing a puerile smirk as he stirred the pot of violence on the American political right. The politics of stupid has intensified since then, as white supremacy and fear of the Great Replacement Theory take over the GOP.

Are we truly on the brink of a civil war? What, indeed, is a civil war? When does violence move from being random and individual — psychological — to strategic and political, which is to say, militarized? Can this happen without a quasi-governmental entity emerging, officially declaring “war” on the political establishment whose decisions it hates? Or is having 8 trillion bullets enough?

Resorting to violence — indeed, celebrating and honoring its use for just and moral purposes — requires a surrender to the temptation of force. No matter how disempowered you are, intellectually and spiritually, force is always available as a means of making your presence felt, if not actually getting your way. Force is a lost soul's last resort. It often turns into the first resort.

Say you're a Republican and you lose an election. What a nuisance! Consider the troubles faced by MAGA-T-shirtwearing, would-be state rep Solomon Peña, who ran for a New Mexico House seat in November, Yeah, he lost, garnering only 26 percent of the vote, but refused to concede and challenged the legitimacy of the election. That accomplished nothing, so . . . what choice did he have? He allegedly hired some guys who drove past at least four houses of local politicians — two state legislators and two county commissioners — and fired bullets into walls and doors. He was arrested a few days ago and charged in the shootings.

There was a time when this would have been seen, in most respectable circles, as insanity. Now I fear it's just one more example of Republican fun and games, as the party members come to grips with their (is it possible?) permanent minority status. Voter suppression is no longer adequate to ensure victories. Donald Trump has given losing GOP candidates their mantra du jour: The election was rigged.

And thus, as Stephen Marche wrote recently in The Guardian:

“The United States is a textbook example of a country headed towards civil war. The trends increasingly point one way, and while nobody knows the future, little — if anything — is being done, by anyone, to try to prevent the collapse of the republic. Belief in democracy is ebbing. The legitimacy of institutions is declining. America increasingly is entering a state where its citizens don't want to belong to the same country. These are conditions ripe for political violence.”

The iconic specter of mainstream GOP violence was, of course, the Jan. 6 insurgency, as thousands of angry white people, egged on by their dear leader, broke into the Capitol as Congress was in the process of transitioning to the Biden presidency, shouting things like “Hang Mike Pence!”

Since then, Republican outrage has morphed into such actions as the breakin last October at Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco home. “Where's Nancy?” the intruder shouted — alas, she wasn't there — eventually attacking her 82-year-old husband, Paul, with a hammer, fracturing his skull.

“But on the right, support for violence is no longer a fringe position,” Rachel Kleinfeld points out at Politico. “. . . This is not a marginal movement: It is people who see violence as a means to defend their values, an extension of their political activity.”

She notes that violence isn't just a matter of wielding weapons: “One particularly pernicious culprit in violence is jokes and memes,” she writes. “Jokes are actually far more likely to normalize prejudice than an overtly prejudiced argument, because sharp-edged humor circumvents our brain's usual pathways for rational thinking.”

For example, shortly after the Pelosi attack, Donald Trump Jr. posted an image on Instagram of a hammer and a pair of un