As a nonAmerican (in both the narrow and the most general senses) I have no part to play in the US electoral processes and I regard it as ill-mannered to debate or make detailed commentary on another country's policies unless it specifically and directly affects my own.

But I was listening to a broadcast on ABC (Oz) Radio National where a commentator was describing the US as an increasingly polarised community, where people who move house tend (more and more) to settle in locations that they seem to identify as being dominated by their own political persuasion. Apparently, US residents can identify Democrat and Republican communities by sight (even when there are no election placards in sight), without any recourse to conversation with the residents. There is also, apparently, a trend for counties to become increasingly dominated by either Republicans or Democrats, with all the unaligned moderates being pushed out.

The material in the original post seems (to my mind) to explain the process by which this has been promoted and some of the subsequent exchanges seem (again, to my mind) to exemplify the results of such polarising.

I know that all communities are regarded by pundits as "polarised" to some extent but the extremes (to an outsider like me) to which it is being taken in the US at the moment bodes ill for any truly democratic society, let alone one that its supporters regard as paradigmatic.

Cheers, Rowan