I think it's pretty difficult to get a sense of what it's really like when all your information comes from reddit and the news (so you only ever hear about things that are newsworthy).

With that said, if reddit reflects people's real attitudes then there's some trends I've noticed. In the past few years, American political discussion has become incredibly polarised and political violence has been way more encouraged than it ever has been before. Even if you agree with the statement "yes, of course it's ok to punch nazis" I think it's worth recognising that the definition of "nazi" has become increasingly relaxed and that attitude is a stark change from the "even if I disagree, I'll defend till my death your right to say it" outlook that dominated online discourse prior to 2016.

This has absolutely gotten worse in the advent of the blm protests: what a few months ago seemed like a unified front of "support protesters, fuck rioters" now seems to erase their existence entirely with talk of whataboutism or sealioning. Maybe these rebukes are right, I genuinely have no idea what's going on because any subreddit containing primary sources selectively omits others in order to portray a partisan narrative. Even newspapers now edit or omit entirely primary sources on major events now making them incredibly difficult to take at face value.

What I can say is this: both conservatives and leftists are preparing themselves mentally to reject the results of the next election. The amount of articles I've seen talking about voter suppression, the post office, the electoral college and russian interference in the last 6 months in default subs is astounding and similarly trump had been talking since before his 2016 election about the rigged system designed to prevent him getting elected and since it seems there is a genuine possibility of his entire cabinet being arrested if he loses the election (and the ways he's leveraged his office for political advantage) I expect this rhetoric to escalate as November approaches.

My worst case scenario is that trump wins the electoral college marginally in november, but again loses the popular vote. I imagine there would be incredibly widespread civil unrest both from disenfranchised leftists and empowered far right terrorists, but I sincerely doubt that anything like a civil war will ever happen because to the best of my knowledge the US military is not highly partisan (particularly among senior officers). The only way this gets worse is if in specific states the electoral collage votes against the results in the state to try swinging the election in favour of a specific candidate (either trump or biden works effectively here).

I think if biden wins there is still the potential for civil unrest depending on how he runs his campaign trail and how he initially acts in office (particularly if he immediately issues harsh gun laws via state of emergency + executive orders, though given his history in office I can't imagine him doing that). Even if trump refuses to leave office I imagine the military would just boot him from the whitehouse, he'd get arrested and then his supporters would be too embarrassed to take any action in response. In any case I don't think US politics can ever go back to pre 2016.

Best case scenario: third party wins, everyone is confused af and life returns to normal (#jojo2020).

I really have no idea how well I understand american politics since I'm so far removed from it, but I do know there's a lot of american cities I would like to not be in on November 3rd. I'd appreciate knowing how accurate the alarmist rhetoric I so often see on reddit is though.