I'm in a big American city, and I remember that until the online kids and snarky liberals started moralizing about mask protocol, there wasn't as much resistance to wearing masks among right-wing crazies.
I remember when there was that controversy about 5G networks interfering with bird migration patterns and meteorology, but as the fringe conspiracy crowd started spinning up crazy theories about how 5G was going to brainwash or sterilize or force-feminize people over the airwaves or whatever it was, most people I knew stopped talking about it, seemed to forget that they had ever thought it concerning. It reminded me of the time people were worried about pollutants causing hormonal changes in indicator species, and then Alex Jones started talking about how "they're turning the frogs gay" and the meaningful version of that discourse vanished too.
I view the same kind of thing as happening here, as well as a lot of other places. It's made me wary of the sport of finding what crazy things my political enemies believe to make fun of them, because it seems like the net effect of this is creating "opposite" erroneous beliefs with no evidence
Surprising how easy it is to fracture American society then.
(And yes, conservatives who believe Obama was the sole source of division are also out of touch. People really need to try to understand the other side).
It was like a mirror image of Trump's election in 2016.
While personally I preferred Obama (as a non-US citizen) it's really sad how much anger and rage is expressed over these political differences.
Personally I think gerrymandering is the proximate cause, as it creates more safe districts for party members, which allows them to be more extreme than would be acceptable in a more competitive district.