Breaks to new mutiny?

 Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

 - Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet: prologue

At Manassas, site of the first Civil War battle

we met a woman who said she reckons another Civil War is coming, 'the way this country's going. It's getting worse by the day.'

I didn't ask her to elaborate. I made certain assumptions. We were in Virginia, which has always resented the federal government. We were in an historic downtown which looked reasonably prosperous. When you run into someone in a CBD who says what she said, they're usually railing about federal taxes (well, taxes state and city as well, but the feds cop it). And we're in an environment where the other side's motives are always purely venal and evil ('the Tea Party are stupid'; 'the Occupy Wall Street people are a mob', although they're actually unhappy about many of the same things). This is a superstition maintained on both sides of politics of course - it is no longer the case that people can concede that both sides have something to offer and that each falls short - so I figured I didn't need to query further.

We are now in Charleston, nine hours away by train from 'Orange Cones; No Phones' and signs of Fall - changing colours, squirrels getting busy carrying oversized nuts, pumpkin lattes...

We've put away winter clothes for now

I wonder if the unhappiness that is expressed to us is at root a symptom of the tectonic plates of American tribalism shifting; the distrust and absolutist opinions a natural consequence of a society opening up its former divisions, an anxiety about the fact that new and more people are these days, as they once sang in the fields round here, 'gwine to sit down at de welcome table'.