“I love historians,” Maher begins. “In college, I majored in history. But I don’t buy the stance that historians are always selling on cable news that “America’s like a cat—it always lands on its feet.” I don’t buy that just because something didn’t happen before, it can’t happen now. Rome didn’t fall and didn’t fall and didn’t fall—and then it did.”

Does that sound ominous?

Here’s more from Maher: “One night on the road I had a driver who hailed from Bosnia. He left because the city of Sarajevo became a war-torn hellscape, and he said to me: “What I am seeing here now is exactly what I saw in Bosnia then. Next-door neighbors who despise each other.” He was telling me that hate on this level can only be sustained for so long before becoming actual war.“

“For decades Sarajevo was a diverse city where Serbs, Croats and Muslims lived together as friendly neighbors. In 1984, they hosted the Winter Olympics. Eight years later, people were getting shot by snipers when they went out for milk. Nobody thought a war like that was possible in Europe so “ late” in history. They believed Europe had passed the point of being vulnerable to such a thing. It hadn’t, and never will, and neither will we.“

A personal note

I was living in Germany a couple of years before the civil war in Yugoslavia erupted in 1991. While in Freiburg, I had a long conversation with a professor from Sarajevo. The man described tensions mounting in his beautiful city, tensions so powerful that he was certain that they could only escalate. War, he predicted, would break out. It did! Below is more from Bill Maher’s grave warning:

“Donald Trump’s middle name might as well be “existential threat”—and I have not been shy about calling him that myself. But the other side sees Democratic control of government in exactly the same way, and it’s unfortunately no longer the case that they’re completely wrong about that. When both sides believe the other guy taking over means the end of the world—yes, you can have a civil war.“

Don’t forget Northern Ireland

“Or think about Northern Ireland, which went through a period where political hatred, born of religion, turned into something called “the Troubles,” which meant the hatred got so bad it could not be contained by the usual means of disagreement. So people lived with bombings and snipings and urban warfare.”

“In America, our warring factions aren’t Catholics and Protestants— but that same level of hatred, of “otherization,” is happening between Democrats and Republicans. We’ve grown less religious, but that’s because politics has become our religion. We used to pray for the nation. Now each side prays the other doesn’t destroy the nation. On one side, the Church of Woke wants to cleanse us of our past, and on the other, the Cult of Trump wants to resurrect it.”