The Economist: Barack Obama. A Country Divided!

After a panel discussion on the US elections hosted by a Dutch radio station the other night, I began to talk to a fellow American who's looking for work stateside. His Dutch government funded job had been eliminated by austerity measures, so he was trying to convince his wife of the virtues of moving back to America. The main reason he was hesitating was the mood of vicious and increasingly entrenched political animosity. "Do you get the feeling." he asked, "that it could get violent?" I said I didn't know, but it's certainly not a silly question. A recent broadcast of "This American Life" which focused on people who have lost close friends in recent years over politics, seemed to capture the mood pretty accurately. One sequence portrayed a student with a life threatening pre existing condition that until recently rendered him uninsurable, who has stopped talking to a conservative friend who refuses to support Obama Care, because he said it felt as though the friend didn't value his life. A conservative man describes being unable to continue talking to a former friend who supports a president he is convinced is destroying the country. Two sisters can't agree on who is being rude and condescending to whom, after a furious falling out over political philosophy. Barack Obama has just won re election, but America remains a country bitterly divided, as it has been for well over a decade. The divide is simultaneously very narrow in numerical terms, and gaping in ideological or partisan terms. This is what strikes one most strongly looking back at America from across an ocean: The country seems repeatedly embroiled in savage 51-49 electoral campaigns, and it seems to be increasingly paralyzed by irresolvable rancor between right and left.