A frenzy of polarization and misgovernance has
engulfed American politics. Actors and institutions—on both sides of the political divide—are silencing disfavored speech. Prosecutors around the country are criminalizing politics. The Republican party is openly sabotaging the electoral system. And a new breed of social-media celebrities in Congress is failing to address myriad public-policy failures, from a broken immigration system, to hugely expensive and dysfunctional
healthcare, to staggering economic inequality.

These problems have powerful momentum behind them—and will likely persist far into the future.

All around the world people are asking: What’s
wrong with America? Why isn’t it working?

The answer isn’t one of the common partisan
narratives. It isn’t the “radical progressives” who want to tear the system down. Nor is it the “deplorable conservatives” who want to punish America’s elites. It’s not a dysfunctional, gridlocked Congress. Nor is it a right-wing, reactionary Supreme Court. It’s not an aging
Joe Biden. Nor it is an ever-angrier Donald Trump (though he sure isn’t helping).

The answer, rather, is broader than any narrow
category or single person. The answer is the American people themselves. A nation is, above all, the hearts and minds of its people. And Americans in the twenty-first century are becoming increasingly untethered from both reality and the essential principles and traditions that have shaped their nation’s historic success. A big part of why America isn’t working is because far too many Americans neither know nor care how it’s supposed to work.

The root cause of this mania is the combination of three deeply connected things. The first is tribalism. Americans, like all humans, have deep tribal roots. This expresses itself in powerful biases in favor of one’s own political clan—and searing antipathy for the other side.

The second is social media. Sophisticated algorithms behind major online platforms exploit Americans’ cognitive vulnerabilities and intensify their tribal prejudices.

And the third is the structure of the US political system itself. The two-party system amplifies
and exacerbates polarization by pitting two juggernauts (Democrats and Republicans) against each other in a bitter, all-consuming rivalry—and gerrymandering, closed primaries, and the Electoral College compound the problem.

This flywheel spins faster every day. And it’s
culminating in two overlapping threats to the American experiment. The first is the criminalization of politics, as prosecutors from around the country set their sights on partisan rivals. Since every political salvo must be met
with greater opposite force, this has set in motion a pernicious dynamic which is spiraling into catastrophe.

The second threat involves the central premise of American government: the sanctity of the vote. America’s election system is under attack. And not just by ineffectual zealots at the margins of power or howling mobs in the street, but by the Republican party’s undisputed leader, Donald Trump, and his loyalists throughout federal and state government.

The election in several months will reveal a lot about the current state of the nation. Given that neither candidate is fit for the job (albeit for very different reasons) it will be not only a bumpy ride till November but a tumultuous four years after that.