Count on every new election year getting more outrageous and possibly more violent until the country boils over, possibly like in 1860 or republican democracy as we know it peters out.
I think you may be right. In the few years prior to the Civil War we had congressmen carrying loaded weapons into the chamber, challenging each other to duels, and Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts nearly beaten to death by Preston Brooks of South Carolina right on the Senate floor. Maybe in a different way we’re approaching that level of division and hatred.