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Notes -
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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