About civil war, etc

Prompted by this:

 

I would have thought it obvious that a proper, full scale, civil war is just silly:  there is no political leadership for it, at all; the clearest political area divide is between rural areas and most city/urbanites - and one cannot last long without the other; and wanky militia are just culture war cosplay when it comes to fighting actually properly organised and armed governments for any length of time.   

But,  you would have to guess that the biggest danger - and one which is guaranteed to be freaking out the FBI at the moment - is a period of intensified Right Wing terrorism against government facilities, employees and politicians.

Noah Smith interviewed someone who set it out like this:

..I think the odds of an actual civil war in the US are low. Rich countries with large security apparatuses tend not to have these kinds of conflicts - they tend to have some combination of less-aggrieved populations and more effective deterrence and disruption of potential rebels. There are of course exceptions that matter (think Northern Ireland), so nothing is impossible. But what Aila Matanock and I argue in our Foreign Affairs piece is that it's more likely you see some degree on ongoing, but probably *comparably* low-level and sporadic, political violence linked to radical right-wing actors. We've seen plenty of this already, especially death threats and disrupted plots. The US security apparatus seems to be, in general, taking this stuff seriously now, though at points we've seen both local sympathizers and efforts at the federal level to downplay threats from the right. My fear is that this kind of low-level but potentially fatal dynamic could persist, especially linked to a Lost Cause myth of a stolen 2020 election, and fueled by Trump and his base. Even with sustained policing, this kind of thing could drag on, and could kill people, even if we never hit standard civil war definitional thresholds (much less 1864 America).

Thinking out loud here, and without making it sound like I hope RW terrorism takes place:   seems to me that the whole "election was stolen by massive Left wing fraud" conspiracy justification is only going to be seriously eroded if Republican leadership AND key right wing media outlets completely repudiate their former semi (or full) endorsement of it.

And I suspect the fastest way for that to happen would be for any  RW terrorist attack causing substantial damage (and, probably, death) to occur sooner rather than later.  

So if there is going to be (say) a - hopefully less deadly - mini McVeigh bombing, for example, it would honestly be better for it to happen now rather than in (say) 12 months time.

Don't get me wrong:  ideally, as soon as Trump is out of office maybe there will be a rush of Republicans to denounce him and all of the conspiracy rumours he promoted, and a unified turnaround of some key figures in the Right Wing universe might start to turn around the dangerous conspiracy believing base.

But I suspect it won't go that way, and its going to take more violence first.