When you compare the likes of Bush and McCain to Hitler, where do you go when faced with people who think those two are RINOs? As with most things, 24 hour news and social media don't help. You're rewarded, often both in terms of money and from the dopamine hit you get from likes and shares, for saying the most outrageous thing.
Churchill was a better painter than both of them. Brad Pitt bought Angelina Jolie the only painting he completed during the Second World War (she sold it after the divorce).
He really wasn’t! Churchill’s daubings are slap-dash and childish - there are lots of them at Chartwell. Hitler was a professional painter, in that he painted landmarks and sold them to tourists. Hitler didn’t exactly grow rich in the process, but no one would buy any of Churchill’s paintings without knowing the identity of the painter.
And the other side has constantly repaiid that by accusing Democrats of being Socialists, Marxist even communists.
Political vitriol does have a long history in the US-- look back at the election of 1800, or at some of the bilge directed at Lincoln. But nowadays there are too many dim bulbs who actually believe it.
One can't discuss the polarization as if it was occurring around some imagined fixed state of political affairs. As Progressives have moved continually to implement further extremes, they have stirred up many citizens who otherwise might have remained politically inactive, just going about their lives and trusting to their government to act as a government should, rather than as a vehicle for crazed ideological partisanship and the pursuit of grift. Progressives have effectually broken the social contract by forcing many measures on society that the public doesn't want and engineering a regime of lies and censorship to maintain a false facade of legitimacy.
I don't agree. We usually hear the hyperbolic rhetoric about division and partisanship when the left doesn't get what they want or lose elections. The left has adopted a scorched earth approach to demonizing their opponents, censoring them and attacking them with lawfare or regulatory retaliations. Most people in the US get along fine, its the fringe leftist in politics, the media and the academy that like to amplify "division" when things don't go their way. Democracy is messy and the US has especially messy politics - look at the elections of 1800 and 1860 just as an example. Fringe leftist like to push the idea of partisanship and division because it suits their political interest. A prominent polling firm found recently that the proposition that men should be allowed to complete against women in sports is the most unpopular idea ever polled (95% of parents with school age children are opposed). When you are the group trying to push such ideas down the public's throat, your cries of "division" can't be taken seriously
The opposite of "division" can be quite coercive particularly given who defines it,
"The worst performing country relative to IQ is easily North Korea. It’s probably the most socially cohesive nation in the world too. Had they had some diversity, perhaps it would’ve been harder to form a totalitarian state based on a socialist ideology that starved its own people. There would’ve been too much discord and instability for one family to turn everyone into slaves."
If you want to get a republican angry, tell them a lie; to get a democrat angry, tell them the truth. The right in America is more generous and capable of debating ideas (though firmly unlikely to change their minds). The left cannot abide debate. That the media, Google, Amazon and Facebook are the top 3 donors to the Democrats tells you about media bias. America has significant problems, and the entrenchment first under Obama and now Biden of the FBI, CIA and HLS all working closely with one side and not 'no sides' is undermining the country. Mail in ballots and voting machines that are demonstrateably not working correctly does not help. Canada is also joining the fray, the BC elections now held up as workers took home ballot boxes and they 'found' 22,000 extra ballots that pulled three seats left to give them a majority. The left believes the end justifies the means (cheating), and the right is not keen to embrace that.
"what concerns so many people is the fact that voters are still prepared to follow someone whose behaviour breaks accepted democratic conventions." A fair description of a regime that: suborned social media in the run up to the 2020 election to suppress inconvenient stories; encouraged riots that killed over 25 people, in order to create chaos around the voting process; removed every possible safeguard to the integrity of the vote; unleashed insane levels of lawfare against their political opponents; engaged in violent rhetoric, its media proxies regretting bitterly and openly that the assassination attempts thereby provoked failed, and was prepared to suppress the reality of a puppet President with a defensive chorus line of "sharp as a tack" assurances, yielding to reality only when the puppetmasters ordered that the strings be cut from the puppet.
The fact that Ed seems to think that all of the above are within "democratic conventions" is pretty troubling. The post says "continued tomorrow" - there's a lot of material that needs to be covered tomorrow if he really is concerned about democratic conventions.
Please refer me to the WaPo articles pre-summer 2024 expressing concern about having a dementia patient with the nuclear codes, and maybe inform yourself by looking up "the Twitter Files": start by searching on Matt Taibbi, a longstanding darling of the WaPo/NYT world, until he couldn't take the stench of that world any longer.
FWIW I am not voting for either Trump or Harris. I have standards. Get me a sane and experienced Republican with a record of successes, even if I disagree with him on this or that, and we'll talk. Ron DeSantis, governor of the state where I live (which is surprisingly well run compared to when I lived here twenty years ago) comes to mind.
The US has never had a single dominant church, yet managed to get along much better than it does now for much of its history. And we've always had non-Anglo people among us, even back in the colonial days. Most obviously people of African descent and the Native Americans, but also Dutch people in New York (where the language was spoken right up into the 19th century) assorted Germans and after 1803 the Cajuns of Louisiana.
It really isn't ethnicity that divides is. The most intense divisions are found within our dominant ethnic group.
"One academic has warned ‘that rising political polarization was showing something more fundamental than political disagreement — it was tracking the transformation of party affiliation into a form of personal identity that reached into almost every aspect of our lives.’"
The pinciple of the Personal is Political became the Political is Personal and has driven an awful lot of people mad. Arendt had a point in identifying this as destroying the barriers around politics taking place in the public space, and let it flood into the private - there is no haven away from politics now.
Looking forward to tomorrow’s article, where Ed squares the circle, showing how Americans can “all just get along” in peace and harmony, and we are in fact no longer doomed, right?
I remember Radiohead, representing all that is good and right with Britain and the world, released an album "Hail to the Thief" to commemorate George W Bush's 2000 election victory.
"they have come to believe that their opponents are cheating the system, or at least so malign as to be prepared to do so." You write this as though only an irrational tinfoil-wearer could possibly believe that Democrats (and in the UK, Labour) cheat the system. If it be true that this represents an irrational hypothesis, what is the explanation for the support of both those parties for massive immigration, and the hysterical opposition by both those parties to voter ID requirements? (Democrats in the US are attempting to make it *illegal* for states to require voter ID.) It's a lot more plausible that both those positions are adopted by both those parties because they want to "cheat", or game, or rig - whatever- the "system". The "system" being the electoral integrity that until the last decade or so a rational citizen could take for granted. What changed in that period? Just because an opponent won't say "My tactics are X" it doesn't follow that strong inference - my opponent's tactics are X - are unfounded.
When I was in the US for a couple of summers about 30 years ago, mixing almost entirely with white democrats, including a stay at an MIT fraternity, everyone struck me as really quite right wing. I recall no interest, at any point, being expressed in relation to anything remotely resembling social justice - unless one includes having a somewhat septic view of red necks. And TV and movies of the time seem to reflect the impression of the US being right wing - and far more so than the UK. What changed and the extent to which it is real is an interesting question.
The center of political gravity in the US is farther to the Right than it is in any western European country. The US never had a (successful) Labor or Social Democratic party. And really, not much has changed here. The crazier Leftwing stuff is pushed by a small minority of radicals, and exaggerated by the Right to scare voters. Most people in the country, though maybe a bit more liberal on economic issues than the GOP would like, remain center-right, though libertarian (small "l") on things like abortion and the "gay" issues. We do not like scolds or busybodies of either the Right or the Left.
Why "rebuke"? They simply do not allow them any power since they are small faction and as such are unelectable in any polity bigger than a university town. Biden was the nominee in 2020, not one of the progressives. And now Harris has moved well away from the far Left in her bid. The fact that crazypants progressive ideas are so unpopular is the reason not to freak out over them. Would that the MAGA nuttery were similarly relegated to the fringes and the GOP were putting up sane and sensible candidates who could wrack up solid victories like Reagan or Bush (41) did.
I understand what you are saying but I think crazypants progressive ideas, however unpopular with the majority, are dominant within the bureaucratic state irrespective and beyond democratic process. This has been achieved largely via an every expanding concept of human rights which creates within society increasingly tribal groups with differential rights and interests, subordinatng the will of the majority and ultimately eroding the majority via factionalisation. Whereas, if a society is to thrive (and ult survive) it needs to be relatively homogenous and there needs to be a dominant group that had broad democratic support and agreed norms and values. That minority groups are somewhat subordinated within this system (or required to conform to it) is necessary if democracy is to exist at all. This is what is contested right now. And that is apparent not just via extreme voices on left and right but via main stream cultural output which seeks to reject the past upon which America is built.
Toe the extent progressive ideas make it through sheer bureaucratic torpor and incompetence they are vastly watered down. Definitely so at the federal level, and generally at the state level too. It's cities where these things sometimes survive intact enough to cause problems.'
The US has never, ever been a society where everyone believed the same about everything. Elsewhere I mentioned the election of 1800 which was very bitterly fought between two sides which had rather different values. Some conflict and disagreement is necessary lest society succumb to entropy and decay, and often enough the way forward is found between extremes, a path at times between Scylla and Charybdis.
Fair enough. Progressive ideas are probably most corrosive in relation to border control and related concept of nation state. Pretty much everything else can be put back in its box/reversed. But then, the US has a relatively good southern border with hispanic populations fitting in pretty well, as they might given significant Christian/european heritage. Europe has a far more challenging border, in the sense that social and cultural assimilation of migrants is far less likely, given very strong, distinct and quite different cultural outlooks - which it is unreasonable to expect to change. Longer term, Europe will likely be an extension of African and ME if Europeans continue to not have children and to accept open borders.
The United States is not a nation state and never was. Nation states in fact are rather uncommon among the c. 200 political states in the world today. Even before the late 20th century surge in immigration, most countries including significant ethnic minorities.
Post no bills on the future. Beyond certain physical basics (e..g, gravity is unlikely to change over time) the future at sufficient length is fundamentally indeterminate. In regards to Europe one big wildcard: if the North Atlantic shuts down or weakens significant, Europe will not be an attractive place for migrants; it may well become a region which large numbers of emigrants to warmer places.
I prefer the term "radicalization" than "polarization" for a couple reasons.
First, to "polarize" suggests that there still are more than one centre of power in society, which shows that we still live in a pluralistic society and not a totalitarian state, which is a good thing. As Richard Hanania put it,
"The worst performing country relative to IQ is easily North Korea. It’s probably the most socially cohesive nation in the world too. Had they had some diversity, perhaps it would’ve been harder to form a totalitarian state based on a socialist ideology that starved its own people. There would’ve been too much discord and instability for one family to turn everyone into slaves"
The very idea of there being multiple factions in society to "polarize" is obviously disdained by totalitarians.
Secondly, "polarization" in its political meaning is relatively new. The word "polarization" was originally coined in the early 19th Century to refer to optics, as in the "polarization of light". It only obtained its political meaning after World War II in the book "The God That Failed" by the German-born ex-Communist Arthur Koestler:
Naturally, Koestler used the term to describe Weimar Germany and how the bourgeoisie who had previously been the bulwark of liberalism and nationalism saw the prospects of its children disintegrate in the hyperinflation of the early 1920s and unemployment of the early 1930s. Subsequently, they "polarized" into Nazis and Communists making Republicanism unworkable.
Since "Weimar" became a by-word for political failure which contrasted heavily with the post-WWII ethos of "unity in a common purpose", this term was popularized the invoke a heroic "vital centrism" that stands against "extremists" on the left and right who hold the democratic process in contempt.
In reality, centrists are the most authoritarian in many respects.
Just to take issue with some of the side remarks about the USA. Columbus made landfall in the Bahamas and explored that region, not the present USA, barring the tip of Florida. The English - not British - and the French were the main settlers in the north, from more than a century after 1492. What became the USA was part of the English Empire for a century, then enjoyed 70-odd years as a chunk of the British Empire, and then had over 250 years as an independent state. It is not a young country. And Thanksgiving is pretty bogus: merely a roast dinner - in England, we have that every Sunday!
Also, I think the USA has ALWAYS been unstable. From 1776 they fought the British, the Indians, the British again, the Mexicans, the Spanish, themselves; it was plagued by bank crises and railroad stock bubbles, and did well economically in large part by drawing in loads of young healthy and eager folk from elsewhere - mainly Europe - and through slavery. The bonanza of WWI was blown in a decade, the 1930s were bleak, and the lesser bonanza of WWII only lasted 25 years - an era when there was virtually no global competition - and then the contents of Ford Knox was sold off in the early 1970s and the construction of the debt mountain began. Harrumph!
I remember my politics tutor saying in 1971 that he believed the USA could not survive another Presidential election as divisive as what was then the last one (1968). It's survived at least two (2016, 2020) - maybe its luck runs out with this one.
In any case, if American elites believe that extremism is good and being a "moderate" more interested in order than justice is bad, they are only learning from the best:
When you compare the likes of Bush and McCain to Hitler, where do you go when faced with people who think those two are RINOs? As with most things, 24 hour news and social media don't help. You're rewarded, often both in terms of money and from the dopamine hit you get from likes and shares, for saying the most outrageous thing.
I have a folder somewhere with all the millions of articles from the 2000s comparing Bush to Hitler. It really was endless.
Although they both like painting, so makes you think
Churchill was a better painter than both of them. Brad Pitt bought Angelina Jolie the only painting he completed during the Second World War (she sold it after the divorce).
He really wasn’t! Churchill’s daubings are slap-dash and childish - there are lots of them at Chartwell. Hitler was a professional painter, in that he painted landmarks and sold them to tourists. Hitler didn’t exactly grow rich in the process, but no one would buy any of Churchill’s paintings without knowing the identity of the painter.
And the other side has constantly repaiid that by accusing Democrats of being Socialists, Marxist even communists.
Political vitriol does have a long history in the US-- look back at the election of 1800, or at some of the bilge directed at Lincoln. But nowadays there are too many dim bulbs who actually believe it.
The Tea Party rhetoric against Obama was insufferable at times. He was called socialist about as much as DJT is called fascist today.
https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/1850564825350365489
One can't discuss the polarization as if it was occurring around some imagined fixed state of political affairs. As Progressives have moved continually to implement further extremes, they have stirred up many citizens who otherwise might have remained politically inactive, just going about their lives and trusting to their government to act as a government should, rather than as a vehicle for crazed ideological partisanship and the pursuit of grift. Progressives have effectually broken the social contract by forcing many measures on society that the public doesn't want and engineering a regime of lies and censorship to maintain a false facade of legitimacy.
Partisanship and polarization are leftist political tools that go all the way back to the French Revolution.
Accurate description of the state of division in the U.S.
I don't agree. We usually hear the hyperbolic rhetoric about division and partisanship when the left doesn't get what they want or lose elections. The left has adopted a scorched earth approach to demonizing their opponents, censoring them and attacking them with lawfare or regulatory retaliations. Most people in the US get along fine, its the fringe leftist in politics, the media and the academy that like to amplify "division" when things don't go their way. Democracy is messy and the US has especially messy politics - look at the elections of 1800 and 1860 just as an example. Fringe leftist like to push the idea of partisanship and division because it suits their political interest. A prominent polling firm found recently that the proposition that men should be allowed to complete against women in sports is the most unpopular idea ever polled (95% of parents with school age children are opposed). When you are the group trying to push such ideas down the public's throat, your cries of "division" can't be taken seriously
The opposite of "division" can be quite coercive particularly given who defines it,
"The worst performing country relative to IQ is easily North Korea. It’s probably the most socially cohesive nation in the world too. Had they had some diversity, perhaps it would’ve been harder to form a totalitarian state based on a socialist ideology that starved its own people. There would’ve been too much discord and instability for one family to turn everyone into slaves."
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/diversity-really-is-our-strength
This is right - I would much rather live in a 50/50 country than a 90/10 country.
If you want to get a republican angry, tell them a lie; to get a democrat angry, tell them the truth. The right in America is more generous and capable of debating ideas (though firmly unlikely to change their minds). The left cannot abide debate. That the media, Google, Amazon and Facebook are the top 3 donors to the Democrats tells you about media bias. America has significant problems, and the entrenchment first under Obama and now Biden of the FBI, CIA and HLS all working closely with one side and not 'no sides' is undermining the country. Mail in ballots and voting machines that are demonstrateably not working correctly does not help. Canada is also joining the fray, the BC elections now held up as workers took home ballot boxes and they 'found' 22,000 extra ballots that pulled three seats left to give them a majority. The left believes the end justifies the means (cheating), and the right is not keen to embrace that.
"what concerns so many people is the fact that voters are still prepared to follow someone whose behaviour breaks accepted democratic conventions." A fair description of a regime that: suborned social media in the run up to the 2020 election to suppress inconvenient stories; encouraged riots that killed over 25 people, in order to create chaos around the voting process; removed every possible safeguard to the integrity of the vote; unleashed insane levels of lawfare against their political opponents; engaged in violent rhetoric, its media proxies regretting bitterly and openly that the assassination attempts thereby provoked failed, and was prepared to suppress the reality of a puppet President with a defensive chorus line of "sharp as a tack" assurances, yielding to reality only when the puppetmasters ordered that the strings be cut from the puppet.
The fact that Ed seems to think that all of the above are within "democratic conventions" is pretty troubling. The post says "continued tomorrow" - there's a lot of material that needs to be covered tomorrow if he really is concerned about democratic conventions.
Most of the above is plain old propaganda, some of it brewed up by people abroad who wish the US nothing good.
Please refer me to the WaPo articles pre-summer 2024 expressing concern about having a dementia patient with the nuclear codes, and maybe inform yourself by looking up "the Twitter Files": start by searching on Matt Taibbi, a longstanding darling of the WaPo/NYT world, until he couldn't take the stench of that world any longer.
FWIW I am not voting for either Trump or Harris. I have standards. Get me a sane and experienced Republican with a record of successes, even if I disagree with him on this or that, and we'll talk. Ron DeSantis, governor of the state where I live (which is surprisingly well run compared to when I lived here twenty years ago) comes to mind.
DeSantis failing to gain traction for the 2024 election is indeed one of the mysteries of our time.
It's all true.
This is the horror of a nation where there is no common religion or blood.
Indeed. A common culture of some sort is required, and what made America tick for generations was a belief in its founding principles.
Now one of its major parties loathes those principles, is eager to say so, and insists that immigrants do not embrace them. Thus the divide.
The US has never had a single dominant church, yet managed to get along much better than it does now for much of its history. And we've always had non-Anglo people among us, even back in the colonial days. Most obviously people of African descent and the Native Americans, but also Dutch people in New York (where the language was spoken right up into the 19th century) assorted Germans and after 1803 the Cajuns of Louisiana.
It really isn't ethnicity that divides is. The most intense divisions are found within our dominant ethnic group.
"One academic has warned ‘that rising political polarization was showing something more fundamental than political disagreement — it was tracking the transformation of party affiliation into a form of personal identity that reached into almost every aspect of our lives.’"
The pinciple of the Personal is Political became the Political is Personal and has driven an awful lot of people mad. Arendt had a point in identifying this as destroying the barriers around politics taking place in the public space, and let it flood into the private - there is no haven away from politics now.
Looking forward to tomorrow’s article, where Ed squares the circle, showing how Americans can “all just get along” in peace and harmony, and we are in fact no longer doomed, right?
lol
I remember Radiohead, representing all that is good and right with Britain and the world, released an album "Hail to the Thief" to commemorate George W Bush's 2000 election victory.
"they have come to believe that their opponents are cheating the system, or at least so malign as to be prepared to do so." You write this as though only an irrational tinfoil-wearer could possibly believe that Democrats (and in the UK, Labour) cheat the system. If it be true that this represents an irrational hypothesis, what is the explanation for the support of both those parties for massive immigration, and the hysterical opposition by both those parties to voter ID requirements? (Democrats in the US are attempting to make it *illegal* for states to require voter ID.) It's a lot more plausible that both those positions are adopted by both those parties because they want to "cheat", or game, or rig - whatever- the "system". The "system" being the electoral integrity that until the last decade or so a rational citizen could take for granted. What changed in that period? Just because an opponent won't say "My tactics are X" it doesn't follow that strong inference - my opponent's tactics are X - are unfounded.
*is* unfounded, sorry.
When I was in the US for a couple of summers about 30 years ago, mixing almost entirely with white democrats, including a stay at an MIT fraternity, everyone struck me as really quite right wing. I recall no interest, at any point, being expressed in relation to anything remotely resembling social justice - unless one includes having a somewhat septic view of red necks. And TV and movies of the time seem to reflect the impression of the US being right wing - and far more so than the UK. What changed and the extent to which it is real is an interesting question.
The center of political gravity in the US is farther to the Right than it is in any western European country. The US never had a (successful) Labor or Social Democratic party. And really, not much has changed here. The crazier Leftwing stuff is pushed by a small minority of radicals, and exaggerated by the Right to scare voters. Most people in the country, though maybe a bit more liberal on economic issues than the GOP would like, remain center-right, though libertarian (small "l") on things like abortion and the "gay" issues. We do not like scolds or busybodies of either the Right or the Left.
"Exaggerated by the Right" here meaning "The Right notices that it dominates the entire policy agenda of the party".
A blatant falsehood, which rather buttresses what I said above.
Where do Democrats ever meaningfully rebuke or resist their radicals?
Why "rebuke"? They simply do not allow them any power since they are small faction and as such are unelectable in any polity bigger than a university town. Biden was the nominee in 2020, not one of the progressives. And now Harris has moved well away from the far Left in her bid. The fact that crazypants progressive ideas are so unpopular is the reason not to freak out over them. Would that the MAGA nuttery were similarly relegated to the fringes and the GOP were putting up sane and sensible candidates who could wrack up solid victories like Reagan or Bush (41) did.
I understand what you are saying but I think crazypants progressive ideas, however unpopular with the majority, are dominant within the bureaucratic state irrespective and beyond democratic process. This has been achieved largely via an every expanding concept of human rights which creates within society increasingly tribal groups with differential rights and interests, subordinatng the will of the majority and ultimately eroding the majority via factionalisation. Whereas, if a society is to thrive (and ult survive) it needs to be relatively homogenous and there needs to be a dominant group that had broad democratic support and agreed norms and values. That minority groups are somewhat subordinated within this system (or required to conform to it) is necessary if democracy is to exist at all. This is what is contested right now. And that is apparent not just via extreme voices on left and right but via main stream cultural output which seeks to reject the past upon which America is built.
Toe the extent progressive ideas make it through sheer bureaucratic torpor and incompetence they are vastly watered down. Definitely so at the federal level, and generally at the state level too. It's cities where these things sometimes survive intact enough to cause problems.'
The US has never, ever been a society where everyone believed the same about everything. Elsewhere I mentioned the election of 1800 which was very bitterly fought between two sides which had rather different values. Some conflict and disagreement is necessary lest society succumb to entropy and decay, and often enough the way forward is found between extremes, a path at times between Scylla and Charybdis.
Fair enough. Progressive ideas are probably most corrosive in relation to border control and related concept of nation state. Pretty much everything else can be put back in its box/reversed. But then, the US has a relatively good southern border with hispanic populations fitting in pretty well, as they might given significant Christian/european heritage. Europe has a far more challenging border, in the sense that social and cultural assimilation of migrants is far less likely, given very strong, distinct and quite different cultural outlooks - which it is unreasonable to expect to change. Longer term, Europe will likely be an extension of African and ME if Europeans continue to not have children and to accept open borders.
The United States is not a nation state and never was. Nation states in fact are rather uncommon among the c. 200 political states in the world today. Even before the late 20th century surge in immigration, most countries including significant ethnic minorities.
Post no bills on the future. Beyond certain physical basics (e..g, gravity is unlikely to change over time) the future at sufficient length is fundamentally indeterminate. In regards to Europe one big wildcard: if the North Atlantic shuts down or weakens significant, Europe will not be an attractive place for migrants; it may well become a region which large numbers of emigrants to warmer places.
I prefer the term "radicalization" than "polarization" for a couple reasons.
First, to "polarize" suggests that there still are more than one centre of power in society, which shows that we still live in a pluralistic society and not a totalitarian state, which is a good thing. As Richard Hanania put it,
"The worst performing country relative to IQ is easily North Korea. It’s probably the most socially cohesive nation in the world too. Had they had some diversity, perhaps it would’ve been harder to form a totalitarian state based on a socialist ideology that starved its own people. There would’ve been too much discord and instability for one family to turn everyone into slaves"
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/diversity-really-is-our-strength
The very idea of there being multiple factions in society to "polarize" is obviously disdained by totalitarians.
Secondly, "polarization" in its political meaning is relatively new. The word "polarization" was originally coined in the early 19th Century to refer to optics, as in the "polarization of light". It only obtained its political meaning after World War II in the book "The God That Failed" by the German-born ex-Communist Arthur Koestler:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/polarize
Naturally, Koestler used the term to describe Weimar Germany and how the bourgeoisie who had previously been the bulwark of liberalism and nationalism saw the prospects of its children disintegrate in the hyperinflation of the early 1920s and unemployment of the early 1930s. Subsequently, they "polarized" into Nazis and Communists making Republicanism unworkable.
Since "Weimar" became a by-word for political failure which contrasted heavily with the post-WWII ethos of "unity in a common purpose", this term was popularized the invoke a heroic "vital centrism" that stands against "extremists" on the left and right who hold the democratic process in contempt.
In reality, centrists are the most authoritarian in many respects.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/23/opinion/international-world/centrists-democracy.html
Just to take issue with some of the side remarks about the USA. Columbus made landfall in the Bahamas and explored that region, not the present USA, barring the tip of Florida. The English - not British - and the French were the main settlers in the north, from more than a century after 1492. What became the USA was part of the English Empire for a century, then enjoyed 70-odd years as a chunk of the British Empire, and then had over 250 years as an independent state. It is not a young country. And Thanksgiving is pretty bogus: merely a roast dinner - in England, we have that every Sunday!
Also, I think the USA has ALWAYS been unstable. From 1776 they fought the British, the Indians, the British again, the Mexicans, the Spanish, themselves; it was plagued by bank crises and railroad stock bubbles, and did well economically in large part by drawing in loads of young healthy and eager folk from elsewhere - mainly Europe - and through slavery. The bonanza of WWI was blown in a decade, the 1930s were bleak, and the lesser bonanza of WWII only lasted 25 years - an era when there was virtually no global competition - and then the contents of Ford Knox was sold off in the early 1970s and the construction of the debt mountain began. Harrumph!
I remember my politics tutor saying in 1971 that he believed the USA could not survive another Presidential election as divisive as what was then the last one (1968). It's survived at least two (2016, 2020) - maybe its luck runs out with this one.
In any case, if American elites believe that extremism is good and being a "moderate" more interested in order than justice is bad, they are only learning from the best:
https://www.reddit.com/r/QuotesPorn/comments/ai9r0n/i_must_confess_that_over_the_past_few_years_i/
A review of a 1983 book by an ex-New Leftist (who is still alive) on movies that reflected views of the Vital Center:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1983/12/25/the-politics-of-the-picture-show/047f8ecb-429b-421f-9694-fb3e0e550e5e/
And a more recent book of his:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-incitements-of-pop-culture-a-conversation-with-peter-biskind/