[dgzl]

I'm under the impression that the federal government knows this and actively tries to keep the population ignorant if their individual personalities. In America's violent culture, people see a massive red vs. blue battle and can't help but take a side.

[swebs]

I'd say it's more due to human nature to break complicated issues down to one dimension. Cameras have megapixels, computers have Flops, countries have some sort of "index" depending on what facet you're looking at, and politics has a single left/right value. Of course it's not very accurate, but that's the idea that's easiest to consume, and thus the one that propagates the most.

The 2-dimensional Political Compass is a huge improvement, but still isn't perfect. Reality is more complex and would require an N-dimensional political matrix.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_compass

[justdeleteKanab]

http://birdsbeforethestorm.net/2016/10/lower-leftism-expandi...

^-- the most intriguing take on the political compass I've ever seen, albeit one with its own biases and issues (I'd replace feudalism with 'early human or tribal societies'). The main point was that it expanded beyond a strictly US view and I found the additional concept lines useful (Democracy line, inequality line, market line). It still runs into the same trouble trying to compress everything down into two dimensions does. Ideologies can end up next to each other that aren't very similar, which the end of the blog post acknowledged.

[blitmap]

Silver lining: We're united against those other people, lol. By politicians encouraging a divided, polarized atmosphere they've created a largely 2-party system (instead of a many-party system).