American democracy is besieged by a multitude of “tribes” and groups/communities that often have no respect for one another.
The toxic and polarizing 2019-2020 US presidential election campaign revealed to the most naive the deep divisions that are violently transforming American social and political reality.
Now, American democracy is besieged by a multitude of “tribes” and groups/communities that often have no respect for one another. It would not be an exaggeration to claim that what divides these groups is in many cases a social hatred with mostly transcendent references and a deep-rooted bipolar sense of conflict between “good” and “evil”.
Much more than in the post-war past, political allegiances are anchored in a primordial, one might say, sense of identities founded in terms of exclusion of “others”. These identities seem to prevail and shape social and political conflicts, constituting the basic organizing principles of the public sphere at the local, state, and federal levels.
Under these conditions, the old precious domestic political idealism shared by moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats that produced at critical junctures the great political, social, and economic consensuses has been tainted to such an extent that cross-party cooperation is almost impossible.
With this vital domestic problem plaguing the American public sphere, managing geopolitical rivalries that manifest in (neo)Cold War tension is extremely difficult.
The rift in Russia-West relations and China’s nationalist dynamism under Xi Jinping are destabilizing the expectations of a weak international community, and this weakness is feeding geopolitical suspicion and unleashing revisionist strategies.
