So many resources are deployed with the aim of making Americans afraid of each other and the world. This polarizes people, who get very heated and expend huge amounts of energy spitting vitriol at each other to no effect, which has the very intentional side effect of making politics so uncomfortable (and seemingly unproductive) to think or talk about that many people who can afford to do so just tune it out, which allows politicians to get away with even more heinous shit because it’s what’s expected of politicians anyway. It’s a pretty elegant, if dismal, system :/