The United States is divided in many ways: left and right, rich and poor, urban and suburban, generational divides, etc. The divisions are visible in the everyday lives of citizens. Everyone considers the opinions and actions of the opposing parties to be pathetic at best. The country will become increasingly divided the further this decade progresses without external conflict. Decision-making capacity will be paralyzed if neither party controls Congress, the Senate, and the presidency.
The situation will be resolved one way or the other. In internal conflict, elections, the preparations for them, and the aftermath play a major role. Voter turnout is high. Politics rarely matters as much. Internal conflicts do not only mean civil wars, but also attempts to change the social system.
There are many participants. Let's first divide the main factors into groups: the people, the president and his government, the parties, the Senate, Congress, the Supreme Court, the media, the techno-oligarchs and the Fed. The latter of these tries to hold the strings of the economy in its hands and has not played a direct role in the conflict. It has played a major indirect role in the confrontation. The benefits of its quantitative easing have mostly gone to the wealthy, which has increased the sense of injustice among the people. The poor are not angry for nothing. The Fed's role is to make sure that the administration has money for its projects. Their costs go to the taxpayers. Some of it eventually returns to them.
Today, the biggest confrontation is between the parties. Despite appearances, not all key figures in the parties are divided into left and right. The traditional media is divided into a left-leaning majority. Some techno-oligarchs sympathize with the current administration and do not actually have a political point of view. The Supreme Court is leaning to the right. Its job is to enforce the Constitution. It is not a rubber stamp of the left or the right at this point. You saw that in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
The people are divided into Democrats, Republicans, and neutrals. The people are divided mostly by their ancestry, wealth, and where they live. African Americans are mostly Democrats. Latinos used to be mostly Democrats, but more and more of them are Republicans. Asians are a small minority for now. So they matter little. The white vote is more evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. In big cities, Democrats are in the majority, but elsewhere it is different.
As it stands, Republicans control the presidency, Congress, and Senate. Democrats are in the minority, and Trump’s followers are in the majority. This may take another year, but at the beginning of 2027 the situation will probably be different, meaning that the Democrats will take control of either Congress or the Senate. After this, the changes made by Trump will end for a couple of years. In this case, nothing will happen unless some external threat appears.
The media is trying to shape the opinions of citizens to their liking. An amazing amount of time is spent following them, when you include social media, up to 10 hours a day are spent on them. Of the five largest daily newspapers, the Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune are on the right and the Washington Post is following Trump. The New York Times and USA Today are on the left. Of the largest television channels, ABC, NBC, and CBS are on the left, while Fox and Fox News are on the right. Television is consumed for about 4 hours a day. Most of the most popular news sites on the Internet are on the left.
Younger generations get most of their media exposure through social media owned by techno-oligarchs. Most of them were previously on the left. Now they have moved more to the right and I don't have any exact information about which direction they are going now. They have the potential to brainwash their users better than regular media. They also constantly monitor their users. These entities determine which parties get their voices heard and control the majority of Internet traffic. They decide the outcome of any internal non-military conflict. They are not the primary parties to the conflict.
Ultimately, the internal conflict is about the struggle between freedom and totalitarianism. It is about whether to allow different opinions and ways of life. Both the left and the right seem to favor totalitarianism more or less at the moment. The majority of important actors are now, under the Trump presidency, punks without ideological attachments.
The younger generations are leaning more to the left, so over the decades the country is moving to the left. In the medium term, the situation is different, and the right now seems to be in the majority. The most significant sign of a shift to the left would be an increase in the number of Supreme Court justices. Right now, the situation is 6-3 in favor of the right. The positions are for life, so it will take decades for the balance to change. Without increasing the number of justices, the Supreme Court will operate according to Republican thinking.
The worst possible change to the current situation is a country moving strongly to the left. The states are already clearly leaning to the other ideology. New York practically elected a socialist mayor. California is strongly left-wing, Texas and Florida are right-wing, etc. Companies are increasingly moving their headquarters out of left-wing dominated states. Right-wingers, and especially the rich, are also moving out of left-wing dominated states. Ultimately, the US economy will determine the course of development in the coming years. I am pessimistic about it, so after this election period, the US may be strongly left-wing. In my view, this will depend on whether Trump really takes control of the Fed by appointing one of his henchmen as the new Fed chairman.
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