Obama’s latter point on polarization is also quite true — especially if one is likening America in 2016 to a decade as chaotic and divided as the 1960s. At the same time, however, it’s hard not to feel like the country has become more divided in recent years. And a majority of Americans seem to agree on this: according to a 2013 survey from The Atlantic and Aspen Institute, six in ten Americans think the United States has become more divided in the past decade. The poll also found that Americans believe we are more divided today than at any other time since the Great Depression — with the notable exception of the Civil Rights era, i.e. the 1960s. [...]
“The American effort to achieve consensus on the appropriate balance between individual and collective freedom,” writes Woodard, “is hampered by the simple fact that America is not a unitary society with a single set of broadly accepted cultural norms, like Japan, Sweden, or Hungary. It’s a contentious federation comprising eleven competing regional cultures, most of them centuries old, each with a different take on the balance between individual liberty and the common good.” [...]
These regions have vastly different histories and cultural backgrounds, and their diverging political outlooks have clashed constantly throughout the country’s existence. Today, America is pretty solidly divided along partisan lines. The Democrats control regions that historically leaned towards the common good, including Yankeedom, the Left Coast, New Netherlands, while the Republicans control regions that historically leaned towards individualism (an enormously unequal and racist individualism, mind you), including the Deep South, Greater Appalachia and the Far West.
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