The US election system not only polarizes public opinion and party policy, it does so to such an extent that the US political culture could be better looked at in the frame of two separate political cultures that happen to share a single election system. That sort of extent manifests itself in terms of not only self-segregation but also enforced segregation. I'm in the ass end of nowhere, South Dakota, and there's a group of prairie dog hunters out here who have determined my political affiliation (or rather, my disaffilition with their own party) by my awkward silences when they crack jokes about assassinating the president, and make a point to take jabs at what they assume to be my beliefs whenever they walk through.
I can hear the argument already that it's just because rural South Dakota is a red state, but that in itself is the problem: we classify states and towns and neighborhoods and people by their political views above several much more meaningful designations.
