American Civil War talk is all the rage this New Year.

No, not that war, the one that cost 620,000 lives and was evoked by President Biden to castigate Senate Democrats and Republicans who are blocking passage of new election-ballot rules. Rather, The Guy refers to the drumbeat of warnings that the disunited United States may in the near future face an internal legal and economic cold war or some kind of hot war.

National Public Radio's Ron Elving reports that "not long ago the idea of another American Civil War seemed outlandish. These days, the notion has not only gone mainstream, it seems to suddenly be everywhere." He summarized anxiety-producing polls that show a polarized nation, and noted that 434,000,000 firearms are in civilian hands.

Then there's New Yorker Editor David Remnick's article "Is a Civil War Ahead?" New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg likewise wonders, "Are We Really Facing a Second Civil War?" A Times op-ed by former National Security Council staffers Jonathan Stevenson and Steven Simon offers "the worst case scenario" in which "the United States as we know it could come apart at the seams" with "insurrection, secession, insurgency and civil war."

New January books include "The Next Civil War: Dispatches From the American Future" by novelist Stephen Marche, who sees virtually inevitable doom, and the slightly more upbeat "How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them" by Barbara F. Walter of the University of California San Diego. (Is it mere coincidence that The Atlantic's London writer Tom McTague is just out with "How Britain Falls Apart"?)

One typical forecaster is all the more interesting because he's Canadian. Thomas Homer-Dixon of Royal Roads University issued a New Year's Eve alarm in the influential Globe and Mail. He believes that as soon as 2025 "American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship."

Outlandish?