How divided is the US? Will it get worse or better?

My answer on Quora.

The US is extremely divided not just on policy, which is largely where the discrepancy existed for the second half of the twentieth century, but now with respect to fundamental belief. This represents a very worrying fissure which I anticipate will worsen over time.

Now this does not mean that there is a healthy middle ground where meaningful overlap can occur. That still exists, but the surface upon which that stands has been shrinking for some time. Some would say that this was accelerated by both Messrs. Obama and Trump.

That is true, however the rapture owes its genesis to earlier rumbles in the post-Cold war time frame that was further fueled by both neoconservative foreign policy initiatives and neo-liberal economic orthodoxies. The irony is that the desperate slide towards a greater polarization has occurred in an era where the US continues to enjoy the luxury of sole superpower hegemony.

Pew Research: Partisan polarization surges in Bush, Obama years - Journalist's Resource

Look at the discrepancies here especially with respect to opinions on illegal immigration, unemployment, healthcare, climate change and treatment by the criminal justice systems. The deltas in all five of these items are significant.

The US is a country of two tribes that consume different media, split along rural and urban lines and have core differences in philosophical outlook that are more apparent now than they were even a decade or so ago.

(Note that these trends predate the Trump presidency)

So what does this mean?

It implies that the core party groupings are currently at an impasse. We have seen this over the last year in the virulent froth generated by the annus horriblis of 2020.

The ever growing Democratic Party Progressive core is dominating the party base. They see the United States as a broken country, cursed with the original sin of slavery and riddled with inequities on both an economic and social level. The US according to this worldview is not exceptional nor was it ever, but it can move to a futuristic ideal centered on European style welfare reforms, that will open up some hope. Key institutions are in need of radical reform with group identity serving as the key driver for this necessary change.

In contrast the Republican Party core is wedded to an individualism that looks back to the elements of greatness that once defined the nation. While it acknowledges the flaws of earlier times it stands against the deleterious path that globalists and progressives have taken the country along. In this view a coalition centered on the defence of constitutional rights will resurrect a moribund country that has been set adrift by elitist indifference to the middle class.

The two visions are far apart. Both focus on an ideal but they have a temporal and spatial distinctions. The one looks to an idealized future, the other values an idealized past. One sees salvation in the universalism of European style social democracy, the other view the Burkean heritage with transcendent value as the optimum.

What they both detest are their respective party establishments. However they are loathe to fully cut themselves adrift as the magnetic pull of the two party system as an avenue for power is so strong. Both however also know though the establishments are living on borrowed time. Although the GOP elites are in a more tenuous position than their Democratic Party counterparts, in having already ceded ground to the populist uprising that was the Trump Presidency.

If a Biden/Harris Presidency fails to deliver it too could face a Plebian insurrection that alters the power domain in the Democratic Party. It almost did with Bernie Sanders.

Can this polarization be drive be controlled?

Not unless a strategic divide gives and meaningful compromise prevails. That will involve the media reclaiming their abdicated role as some sort of honest broker (which is very unlikely), big tech refraining from political censorship and the education system reforming itself. All of this appears as a pipe dream in the contemporary.

If both political cores view the system as broken and their solutions sit in opposition to one another then there is not much that can be done. Worse still if the burning issues are ignited with regularity.

The impetus for resolution has to exist and if it is held back by disparaging the other and framing debate in correct speak it will ultimately fail. This is where the country sits right now. A far cry from the unity that Joe Biden called for with the prognosis looking decidedly bleak. I hope that I am wrong.