In the years leading up to the Civil War, the divisions between North and South became so irreconcilable that members of Congress would arrive on the chamber floor armed with pistols.  At one point, Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner was brutally beaten with a cane as he sat in his chair in the Senate.  It wasn't just that emotions ran high.  It was that both sides began to see the other as aliens – citizens of a different country.

We aren't there...yet.  But we can easily see a day in the not too distant future where political violence will become commonplace, and instead of screaming at each other and insulting one another, left and right could come to blows.

Former rep. Thaddeus McCotter penned a thoughtful essay in American Greatness about this "cold civil war."

Realizing politics is part of life, one side believes America is fundamentally a good country requiring some prudent improvements upon which reasonable minds may differ.  On the other side, the Left, thinking politics is life, believes America is a hopelessly unjust nation requiring "fundamental transformation" and this is a point on which no reasonable minds can differ.

The Kavanaugh confirmation evinces the political abyss between us; and the bathetic depths to which this divide drives the Left to "win."

Driving this maniacal desire to "win" is what we used to call a "false consciousness" – the belief in a reality that simply doesn't exist.  Everything and everybody who says anything to disagree finds his words exaggerated and blown out of proportion until all meaning is lost.

Regrettably, there is the decided likelihood that the Left's propensity for violence will continue to escalate in proportion to its rhetoric.  When Collins is libeled viciously as a "rape apologist" and the entire Republican Party is defamed as "Rape-Publicans," why would any virtue signaling narcissist resist (even if they [sic] could) the incited urge to attack such villains?  If you think these people would always resist the lesser angels of their natures, feel free to acquaint yourself with the video of the young pro-life lady being kicked by the "feminist" left-wing goon. 

Should we give leftists the benefit of the doubt and recognize the sincerity of their views?  McCotter thinks so:

Why does the fascist Left feel entitled to engage in sedition, slander, stalking, and violence to pursue it ends?  Conflating politics with life and thinking America is beyond redemption absent a fundamental (and impossible) transformation to socialist Eden where everyone must think the same upon pain of ostracism and worse, the Left cannot believe that anyone who disagrees has good intentions.

In the insane, prog-whistle world of these self-anointed social injustice warriors, where words that challenge their leftist dogma are deemed "violent," they feel entitled – indeed, compelled – to attack all dissenters in "self-defense."

This is the "crux" of the cold civil war.  Leftists' delusions about those who disagree with them create self-induced hysteria and paranoia that reflexively lead to "self-defense" measures.  Many leftists actually believe that all on the right are racist, violent, white supremacist fascists and must be destroyed for the "good" of their Utopia.

McCotter thinks there's a way back from the brink:

Yet the pressing question for those citizens of sound mind and stout hearts is not what will be the next manifestation of the Left's vicious political paroxysm.  To be forewarned and forearmed is, truthfully, all one can do.  No, the question at hand is how, for the future good of our free republic, the Left can be constructively engaged and political civility, if not yet comity, restored.

In the wake of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, this increasingly is a question only the Left can answer, for it is their calumnies and lawlessness exacerbating the political divide and deepening the America's cold civil war.  Best the Left ponder and devise an answer soon.

I don't think McCotter is saying there's a chance this could happen, only that it would appear to be the only way to avoid tragedy.  After having seen the over-the-top, hysterical attempts to defeat the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, can any of us really hold out hope for peace?