True.

We were taught that the Civil War was your second, the Revolutionary War being the first.

In the aftermath of the first, Canada had a huge infusion of United Empire Loyalists, those who fled the conflict or were hounded out of the 13 Colonies for supporting England and who had lost everything.

In part, it's why Canada welcomes those who have lost much. We also had three rebellions, all of which were put down.

As to the US constantly flirting with disaster?

It seems that foreign wars united the various factions under one banner just enough that another civil war was averted. Just.

Vietnam just about tore your country apart and it was as much as a class conflict as anything: working class versus a slightly better educated middle.

Ironic when one considers that the working class were the ones most likely to be drafted and fight and die in Vietnam.

9-11 had the same effect.

Again you're right. The dialogue regarding 9-11 and the reasons for an imperial march on Baghdad were stupendously fallacious prevarications.

The costs were and are staggering.

And that's not even getting into the machinations of Trump widening the divide by using diatribes purloined from Vince McMahon's 'Professional Wrestling' handbook.

Lastly, maybe just maybe the constant teetering on the catastrophic precipice has, while increasing media profit, kept us all locked up in a siege mentality, forced behind tribal walls so small that our nations can only be viewed from a narrow ledge, while in the castle keep, the Barons and would be Kings, the oligarchs, divide us and the spoils.