This.
And even without social media, the conversation would go in the same direction because this fracture in American society has been growing anyway and is hugely about religion and gun crime and it's difficult to see how this would be reconciled however you cut it.
I just think social media has speed up and inevitable process which would have happened at some point anyway.
You can see it in reactions to Obama's election and the Bush Wars. You can see it in how overseas funding for women's health has rested on position on abortion with certain initiatives being started every four to eight years and then completely reversed.
The tribalism and the justification for the unjust.
Those who have the money in America were able to dominate traditional media long before the internet. Do we think Musk would have sat on his hands and been silent in a world without social media, or do you think he would have been a disrupter still? Fox News would still have existed, happy to fuel on conservative American viewpoints.
I think technology change has had a destabilising effect, but you can't destabilise a situation which is doesn't have significant problems to begin with.
You still have formation of alternative cultures before the internet, which included groups which met up and communicated in other ways. So this would have happened - perhaps less so involving children - but certainly I was reading fanzines in the middle 90s and that led me to meeting people in real life before I started to do that with the internet a couple of years later. I was in my late teens before leaving 6th form. A friend of mine was doing similar from age 15 and she ended up with a dubious experience. Think of band fanclub culture as a good example of this. The internet has widened how many teens access the wider world and outside communities to more kids and probably slightly younger kids, but it was still there already. I genuinely think we'd have had the rise of anime culture within the UK regardless of the internet - and that would have attracted a similar crowd and similar types of issues because it tends to be a common focus. Equally gaming was already a thing and clearly was going to be going forward, regardless of the role of the internet within that. I'm fairly sure in the US churches and gun clubs would be similar types of focal points for exchanges of ideas.
Going back to politics the process of polarisation was well under way by the Clinton era - and the response to the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The Republicans tried to impeach Clinton for his lying and inappropriate conduct but the Democrats closed ranks on party lines to protect him. This arguably did significant long term damage to the US political system and if the Democrats had had the integrity to question his conduct properly the present might be very different. If you look back at the whole saga now through the lens of 2024 it really does look terrible, but somehow it was span away and political tribalism was more important than conduct of a political figure abusing his position of power and trust.
Clinton made a point of wording things in a very particular way to look like a total denial but actually just excluded the things he had done in the definition provided. And Clinton was enabled in this denial by Hillary Clinton which you could argue made her look weak and manipulable and under the control of Bill rather than acting independently.
Then you have George W Bush: a man who was one of the least popular presidents with his weapons of mass destruction and wars. Which again had a massive fracturing of US society.
Followed by Obama who scared with the mere idea of universal health care because they had been conditioned to be suspicious and opposed to anything vaguely resembling socialism due to a generation of McCarthism still lingering in the ears.
Throughout this period there was little working together on importance issues of national significance with Congress often blocking the President when they could. A culture of non-cooperation was well established.
Fast forward to Trump and it's harder to make anything stick because of tribalism, sexual misconduct in a position of power doesn't stick and stood next to a Democratic woman who has lied along party lines to secure her position it doesn't make her look great because the well has already been poisoned. By the historic actions of others. And she never did anything to step outside Biden's shadow or took the iniative for her own pet project. Once again there's this interpretation of Harris being weak and manipulable by shadowy men who are really in charge and her just going along with this for her own self interest and career.
I think we forget a lot of this history in the UK and how it has coloured the development of US politics and how voters respond. Hillary Clinton's image was promoted as a senior serious politician in her own right and tends to be what we now remember in the UK. The image of her being the wronged wife who went along with her husband and was made a fool of by him isn't one that has been promoted outside the US for obvious reasons, and instead was carefully managed. But this concept and idea was repeated and promoted during election cycles by the Republicans within America. Ditto Harris.
I think it's extremely difficult to get away from and key points like the manipulation and bastardisation of legalised language by the Democrats to suit an agenda rather than plain simple talking that may be blunt and honest but gets to the point even if somewhat crassly stand out.
Bill Clinton's actions and the Democrats tribalism that followed, made it much easier for Republicans and Republican voters to dismiss Trumps personal misconduct in favour of tribal priorities. We can't avoid this as a point.
And I would argue that the sight of Harris being weak in not challenging Biden's fitness for office and her merrily abusing and manipulating language to suit a political agenda (like Bill before her) and this overall political tribalism which goes back to before the internet was always going to be a massive problem because of what had gone before.
This issue of cultural correction and abuse of power which is then spun and sanitised is an ongoing theme of 30 odd years in the making.
Add in other economic and social twists and turns leading to economic hardship and growing mistrust in politicians and the media who enable the spin and haven't challenged the spin from 'their own side' when they should and the public resentment of this is very understandable. If you stand on the 'wrong side' of this massive social divide which has existed since the age of the civil war and has never gone away, I do think how you interpret many of these things would be hugely different to how we view it in the UK. Social media hasn't changed this dynamic. It was already widening with every election and every significant American political crisis - and we've just come off the back of one of the biggest social crisis the US has faced post WWII with COVID.
I don't deny the role of the internet in inflaming and speeding things up - but looks at it's foundations and recent history too. There's way more here that has added to the course of events. Polarisation has been led by politicians protecting their own self interests and personal careers way before broadband was revolutionising society.