Thread by @BuzzFeedNews

The US is a powder keg waiting to explode in political violence, according to two academics who measure political instability.

And even a smooth transition to a Biden presidency won't change that, they say.

buzzfeednews.com/article/petera…

A statistic called the political stress indicator, which can warn when societies are at risk of erupting into violence, was developed by evolutionary anthropologist Peter Turchin.

It's spiking in America, just like it did before the Civil War.

A decade ago, Turchin predicted that instability would peak in the years around 2020, due in large part to growing inequality.

And now that we're in 2020, we're faced with a pandemic, civil unrest over racial injustice, and a president stoking unfounded fears of voter fraud.

Sociologist Jack Goldstone, whose work was foundational for Turchin, fears that we may be on the way to a second Civil War, with the 2020 election serving as a potential “fire-starter” event.

"The social problems are the gasoline. Trump is throwing the matches," he says.

If Trump is just the fire, how do we get rid of the fuel?

We need to "tip the shares of economic growth back toward workers and improve government funding for public health, education and infrastructure," Goldstone and Turchin wrote.

The US has done it before:

In the 1930s, as parts of Europe slid into fascism, the US elected Franklin D. Roosevelt to drag the nation out of the Great Depression by ushering in the New Deal.