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The rage is less important than whether a practical path forward exists. In the times you mention, there was a path forward. Wind the clock back a little more to the late 1850s, and there was no path forward, so it came to serious violence.
If you see a path forward now, your eyes are better than mine.
Sure. And a couple years ago, the actions individual people chose was to tell lies to foment mass violence nation-wide, then fanned that violence continually and dropped the hammer on anyone who tried to resist. A massive amount of damage was done, and now everything is worse, and none of the people responsible suffered meaningful consequences. They did that because they thought it was in their interest. They'll do it again, because they still think it's in their interest. Sooner or later, they'll force the issue to the point where your options are surrender and be crushed, or fight. They'll push it that far because it's the only option they have other than giving up. Their values demand it.
Thanks! Maybe you should invest in Lasik or something, friend. Alternatively...
As for this part:
I absolutely agree. It was awful, immoral, and absolutely destructive. The recent response to the Covid pandemic and the George Floyd situation were bungled unimaginably bad. Unfortunately for Covid at least, both parties were more or less complicit in fucking things up, at least on the national stage. On the local level conservatives made much better choices.
In my mind the obvious solution is to keep blasting the truth from the rooftops in places like this, and not let the people who pushed for these awful policies and disregarded our liberties get off scott free. It will take some doing and persistence to push through the government propaganda, it always does. But I'm encouraged by the fact that the Covid response has seen things like Musk taking over Twitter, and generally a much larger signal-boost of the wrongs committed.
If all goes well, this blatant corruption and evidence of outright lies by the elites during a time of serious upheaval will serve as a renewed beacon of the importance of free speech. If we do our jobs right in learning from the disaster, we can teach a whole new generation of people to keep the flame of liberty alive, and warn them away from the dangers of authoritarian governments, policies, and ideologies.
Again it won't be easy, but this is the path forward that I see, which it seems like you are too blind to even admit it's a possibility. I'm not saying it's the only path forward, or even the most likely. But for you to effectively say it's impossible is utterly foolish, and as @Amadan says in his other response, this type of rhetoric is exactly what will lead us to unnecessary bloodshed and war.
I like your thoughts elsewhere and you've helped me to become a more moral person with some of your other perspectives, so I hope I can convince you to lay down your sword and work for a peaceful resolution.
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I think I have mentioned before that I have been chugging chronologically through presidential biographies. I'm up to Franklin Pierce (not exactly a page-turner).
A common theme from about Andrew Jackson on is "He set in motion / failed to prevent events that would lead to the Civil War."
And while I haven't actually gotten to Lincoln and the Civil War yet, I have already concluded that this is basically wrong - that the Civil War was inevitable, due to irreconcilable differences (arguably baked in from the start), and no president could have prevented it. Individual decisions or different policies enacted by some of them might have shifted the timeline a bit, maybe even made the whole thing shorter and less bloody (or longer and much bloodier), but slavery was just not something we could compromise on forever. Half the country wanted slavery to end, half the country didn't want slavery to end, and all the various attempts at "Okay, we'll only have some slavery" were of course doomed.
(Yes, I am reducing the irreconcilable differences to slavery. Of course there were other issues as well, but really, it boiled down to slavery. But that's an argument for another time.)
There was no practical path forward in 1861. At most the can could have been kicked down the road some more.
So, as for where we are today: until recently I would have said we don't really have literally irreconcilable differences. Yes, red state vs. blue state (and all the cultural and economic differences that entails) will always be a thing. Abortion and gay rights and racial tensions and transing kids - they are very heated topics, but compromises do (and did) exist.
Individually, I don't think any issues we face today are truly things people would go to war over. The escalation of race issues, worse than I ever imagined it would be in the optimistic, "colorblind society" nineties, may come close.
But I do think there are enough people who are so angry that they want to "break the system," light the fire, set off the war, that there is a danger this will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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