I've been thinking hard lately about what a "civil war" means in the current context of the US.

Resistance from one side juices up the other side. There's no "uh uh we went too far we fucked up" realization possible. We basically have a Chinese finger trap of mutual hatred.

A civil war wouldn't be based on territory or administrative districts (cities-counties-states). This conflict is literally between two highly distributed populations that can't coexist peacefully any more.

So, bombing a city or whatever won't work except symbolically (IE, Portland or Seattle for two examples) and I think either side would realize that they'd be martyring uninvolved and non partisan individuals that get hurt.

I see this conflict taking place as actions that can be individually targeted and also at distance.

For instance, anthrax and microbiological mailings. To whom? Individual voters, maybe, based on public information voter rolls. Pick out all of the Nazis from the state voter registration public info. Churches, NGO offices and political offices, businesses of all sides, schools of course, especially Christian schools.

Chemical and bio agents delivered by small drones. (advantage: much less chance of tracking. than the mail)

Bombings... today in a town in Utah a bomb was found under a Fox News van.

Increased SWATting.

Probably lots of other possibilities including mass doxxing, impersonation on social media to cause harm, AI spoofing to cause harm, etc

Maybe, individual blue jurisdictions going rogue and instituting ant-conservative policies (to a lesser extent also from the red areas.) Whatever it may be. Poll taxes on MAGA voters, harrassment by law enforcement, etc

I'm taking as a given that the ratio of mail, SWATting and bombing assaults is orders of magnitude more likely coming from liberals than from conservatives.

It may not exactly look like war but I could see someone like Destiny or Hassan Piker creating memes about covert mass assassination that develop momentum with lefties.

I guess it could look like war if some agent does the actions en masse (sic: drone swarms of anthrax payloads targeting Christian elementary schools.)

This isn't even exotic, except for the anthrax it's mundane technology on the toy level.