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Notes -
I've actually wondered about this off and on. There seems to be remarkably little organized political violence in America despite the high cultural and political tensions. There have been many times and places where such tensions would have resulted in hot Civil War. I'm defining organized violence as multiple people actively planning to commit some specific act of violence in advance, so showing up to a protest, even with weapons and armor, but without any plans for specific acts of violence, doesn't count.
I'd also note that substantial terrorist / insurgent violence has happened many times in many countries, and it seems the source is very rarely a particularly wealthy individual.
My best guess is that FBI undercover sting operations have done a tremendous job of poisoning the well against any significant group turning to violence. Run a countless stream of undercovers and CIs pushing violent plans so that you can bust anyone who follows along, in every group for every ideology. Make sure you publish all of the details about it every time. Pretty soon, anyone who proposes any type of violence will be suspected of being a Fed infiltrator, or somebody recently turned by them for some reason.
This is probably a good thing if you actually don't want lots of violence, the chaos of a failed state, etc. But it does make you wonder exactly what happens if the tensions just keep rising, but nobody ever does any real violence.
Which does bring us back to - you can write a movie or book about anything. But if we're talking about reality, or concerned about being realistic, how does our generic eccentric billionaire find people who aren't total losers to commit violence? Anyone with any clue would suspect they're being set up. Maybe you can find some of those losers, but they usually don't seem to be that good at working in teams or following instructions.
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