I'm not so much worried about another civil war

as I am about another Dark Ages, when a majority of people scorned science and actively persecuted people engaged in things most people didn't understand. There are people today who believe the earth is flat; how soon will it be before someone points out that it's clear the sun goes around the earth, not the other way around.

A friend of mine believes the moon landing was a hoax "because it's impossible to maintain radio communication that far away." He is ill-educated yet basically intelligent (really!) and if I had the skills to teach him I would. But how soon before people who don't understand science (we already have creationists who have a foothold in some school districts) question everything we know about--oh, vaccines, say--because they don't understand how they work. So they make up stories about what's going on--vaccines are a way to implant chocolate chips for mind control, for instance.

I said to my friend the other day that he is living in the Matrix, where nothing is what it appears to be, and everything is controlled for some malevolent reason, like making your kids want to change their gender.

If Biden doesn't win, and Trump does, I truly feel we're heading down a road darker than anyone can imagine.