[STM]

A riot does not a civil war make.

Yes it's true that there have been conflicts in recent years but only a number proportional to the size and population of America. Let's stay that your '12 accounts' is accurate (I didn't check), that's 12 accounts of localised conflict in one year for a population of over 500,000,000 people.

Historical uprising comes from the systematic stamping on of the working class, this is true. However the working class are not (from what we have seen) educated or intellectual enough to unify and promote a common interest. That is where the middle class come in; Lenin, MÃ*cheál Collins, Jefferson Davis and William Sherman. On an even lower scale, these leaders require the financial and political backing of a middle class elite. All these leaders comes forth at a time of national distress or when popular discontent has fermented across the world.

In 2014 and likely in 2044 there will be no popular backing for any mass civil war, there are no trends to suggest there is any more popular discontent than ever there has been in America since before the civil rights movement (a nadir in race relations that was far more aggravating than the current events in Ferguson, MO). The point I was trying to make was that your average Joe Bloggs of Middle-America, with his family of four, his sedan, his Ikea furniture and his new washing machine is not interested in taking up his .22 pistol and charging heroically towards the local government office to demand immediate rectification of society's problems. We, a collective of the Western World, are far too comfortable with the status quo to bring any sort of violent upheaval to the capitalist oligarchy.