Things are not healthy in the USA, and have not been for a long time. It's all about scoring points now, owning the other side, getting soundbites, etc. It's sad that it's progressed to this.

From an outsider, it really feels like there's no middle ground in American politics. You either commit yourself to the full slate of beliefs for one side, or you're the "enemy".

I hope that Americans on both side start to see that either they need to tone down the rhetoric, work together and reach across the aisle, or just take the tough step of a national divorce due to irreconcilable differences.

Part of that is to stop giving a voice to the insane rhetoric, and stop electing *waving vaguely*.

If you look closer, I'm pretty sure a majority of us aren't really on a "side", think the whole situation is incredibly stupid, and wish the politicians would just shut up and actually...govern...instead of playing silly games and pandering to the crazy people (on either "side").

However, both the established parties seem to have become totally incompetent to do that, in very different ways. One party got taken over by people who make public statements on a daily basis that would have been immediately disqualifying at any time since 1950 or so. The other party is so bad at doing politics that they're beaten in elections despite running against those people.

Violence has plagued US politics since literally the creation of the country. Four sitting presidents killed and a few other close calls, governors and senators shot, almost in every decade. So it’s not like horrific events like this are new to us and we are just recently starting to fall into an unknown downward spiral of violence.

I don't think most people are on either extreme, but the media does make it seem that way, along with reddit/twitter/bluesky etc.

Yea it becomes a vicious positive feedback loop unfortunately, amplified by social media. Moderate voices gets drowned out because they're boring. Some outlandish thing on one "side" gets some strong reaction from the other side, which gets some strong reaction from the other side and so on. The whole system is set up for amplifying extremes.

It's not like this in the day to day of 99% of us. It's the 1% amplified by 100% online by all parties.

The national divorce was tried once in 1860. Hundreds of thousands died to effectuate it or stop it.

When people say the north fought to preserve the union, I always thought it meant the physical union. But recently, I saw a lecture by Gary Gallagher at the UVA that shone a brighter light on what union meant in 1860. It's worth a listen, search for it on YT.

America is founded on the principle of human selfishness. People are selfish, so let’s harness it instead of pretending that people are utopian selfless creatures.

More recently, selfishness has taken second seat to hurting the “other” (whatever other happens to be) even to the detriment of one’s own self interests. America is not built for this.

I agree, politics has become a blood sport.

A lot of mythologizing about the US, its constitution, and its government has come crashing down in the past 20 years, pretty much since 9/11 and the rise of the internet. I think this is overall less a story of America is unhealthy now than US citizens have been believing comforting lies about its nation/government since the actual victory in WW2 and the cultural victory in the aftermath/cold war. The internet and 9/11 really woke people up I think.

The truth is the US has been seen periods of extreme rhetoric and even political violence, including most obviously an actual civil war, and also key periods like the labor movement and civil rights movement. It will happen again even if things cool.

Political violence and assassinations are obviously terrible and should hopefully not happen as debate allows consensus or at least compromise to be reached, but the reality seems to be if you allow the people a stake in their government, passion and anger will be instilled in some subset of those people cause government policies have real world implications, and the end result is extreme acts, many of which are detestable like this one. I don't see a way forward other than to prosecute crimes and let the debate rage on.

My sense is this: one side is utterly unhinged, the other seems desperate to outdo them.

I’ve left out which side is which, because I think it works both ways.

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Maybe its time...we consider separating? We seem to be evenly divided, with neither side making any ground in more unifying the American people. Trump leans into division (he has never been a unifier, and screws up any chance he has to call for unity rather than going after his enemies), the Democrats seem to either have moribund leadership or leadership that are taking lessons directly from Trump and won't be unifiers either. Both sides are getting more angry, maybe we just shouldn't be one country?