White House race - A divided America is weakened

Even though the American Civil War ended nearly six decades before our own, that country, still the world’s biggest economy, still the great superpower, seems polarised in a way unimaginable in contemporary Ireland or Europe.

It seems that those on either side of America’s culture wars do not care to understand each other, much less work with each other, to rebuild an economy as comatose as any in the western world. How else could anything as vile, as shamelessly dishonest, as comedic, as Fox News maintain such a strong foothold in the public space?

The great divide between Republicans and Democrats is fuelled by a corrosive, mutual loathing that diminishes the idea of America and its ability to advance the liberal, egalitarian and meritocratic values that, for centuries and for impoverished millions, made it their last, the very last, great hope.