What do you know...

I actually got a reply to my previous post regarding the political situation in the USA!
Actually, that's two replies. The one I'm going to post I've received via PM on a forum I frequent. Because the poster said he can't post a comment, for some reason...
(I just tried to reply on the other comment, which was hugely amusing. No luck. How do you lock yourself out of commenting on your own blog? Either way, it seems quite likely he was unable to post.
If anyone else encountered the same problem, I'm sorry! Will try to fix it, too, though I'm no expert.)

Still, here's Frank Mueller's reply. I'm quoting with minimal editing (mostly new paragrpahs, which I think were lost during the copy and paste).

"Perhaps not the 1860's, so much as the 1850's, and then the War in Missouri in the '60's

The main war during the ACW, was regional and despite the protestations of some, it was about slavery - and in support of Asen's original thesis, just [like] the current President, Democrats of Lincoln's day didn't even wait for him to attain office to decide that they just knew that he was going to ruin their world, before he'd even had a chance to act.

Today's American division is far less a matter of region, and more of a neighbor vs. neighbor and brother vs. brother divide, the way "Bloody Kansas" was divided in 1854 by the Douglas Kansas-Nebraska Act. I used to live twelve miles from the place where John Brown lead six of his neighbors down to a creek where he decapitated them with a broadsword. 35 miles north was the site where pro-slavery Missourians trapped a group of Free State men in a school house. They blasted them out with a cannon.
Once the War started, Kansans called Jayhawkers would form vast companies of raiders to pillage Missouri homes of Union and Confederate alike, while in Missouri itself, neighbors and relatives alike would murder one another by night and broad daylight alike over politics. Missouri Bushwackers would wear Union uniforms and ride around and shoot any civilian that tried to 'helpful to them Yanks', while the real Unionyroops would march about and punish those who weren't helpful by burning their homes.
No part of America was torn apart like Missouri was, and that's what we're walking into. I see old pictures of the Civil war in Lebanon in the 70's and wonder not if, but when that happens to our cities. Beirut was once a beautiful city. By the mid 80's it looked like some dystopian Sci-Fi end of the world set.
But the really desperate part is, I no longer see a way out. We have become two separate peoples, and contrary to what some would say, diversity is not strength, unity is. Not unity of color, but unity of culture and belief. If we could find a way to separate into our respective people's and just go our own way, civil war might be avoided, but I've yet to see that kind of maturity on either side.
So hunker down my fellow Americans, teach your children good principals and Survival, and pray like your lives depend on it, because they do.

Frank Mueller"

Well, I just got a lesson in American history.
But then this actually supports my original gut feeling. Though I can't say I'm glad to have confirmation.