Extraction War, Not Civil War

Instead of ideologically aligned sides, a brittle U.S. could drift into low‑intensity conflicts driven by cartels, oligarchs, and private security—more Congo than Fort Sumter. Violence would center on resource and value extraction under collapsing state capacity while propaganda and elite enclaves persist. The result is daily degradation without formal secession or organized fronts. — This reframes 'national divorce' and civil‑war talk toward state‑capacity, cartelization, and private coercion as the real risks to social order.