40% of Americans don't want you to apologize on their behalf [0]. From a Canadian, this type of comment is exactly what is driving your country apart and what lead to the election of Trump in the first place.
What is your suggestion for unifying with people who support a leader who has abused his power in broad daylight over and over again? And who has abused that power to avoid punishment for other abuses?
It seems pretty fundamental to me: It's a matter of if are you okay with a blatant authoritarian if he's in your side. I don't know how to bridge that cultural difference in how we wish our leaders to behave.
Go talk to them, listen to them, sympathize with them, you know, be a compassionate human instead insinuating their stupidity by outright calling someone they support stupid.
I joined a big discussion group to see how I could convince people ( > 8000 Dutch members on Facebook).
While I took a lot of effort for 5 months to reason with the outliers of the group.
I had concluded that it was not possible to reason with outliers since they used "Whataboutisme" and the only effective way to convince other people and "shut them up" ( I know it sounds rude) was to actually be rude, handle their current arguments and point out the idiocracy of the arguments they were using ( hence the harsh term used).
My effectiveness rate went from 4-5% to almost 90% in having the "last" argument. It also seemed to greatly reduced the amount of pointless topics started by that person.
There was only once someone effective in working arround it, using "doubtful" sources.
I disagree with your second conjecture. The polarization of United States has been largely due to bankcrupting its middle class of its industry, paying off executives(not literally, but due to allure of making cheaper goods in China), social media and Russian interference in the election of Trump.
This is a grand plan of Russia and China to divide western nations, increase internal anti-US propaganda to bolster their authoritarian regimes.
You're pointing to the symptoms, not root cause. And this is exactly what the communist regimes want the west to do - fight against each other. Just wait before Canada get's roped in all of this as well.
It's already happening in Canada. Look at our last election [0]. A clear divide between Toronto and Western Canada. It was a very sad day for me to see my country completely torn in two with both sides cementing themselves in place.
The Soviet Union ended 30 years ago and reducing China's government to "communist regime" is at best naive and ignorant and at worst deliberately misleading.
You're right, I'll edit to to "authoritarian" regimes. What I meant was that authoritarian goverments cannot afford dissent and try everything to supress.
It seems pretty fundamental to me: It's a matter of if are you okay with a blatant authoritarian if he's in your side. I don't know how to bridge that cultural difference in how we wish our leaders to behave.