[api]

It wasn't like that in the beginning of the pandemic.

Any potential source of division in the US gets seized upon by the utterly massive partisan propaganda machinery (of both parties) and turned into a fault line with which to segment the electorate. Nothing is immune, and the process is advanced, scientific, industrial scale, and highly effective.

The reason billions are spent to do this to us is that elections are largely decided by whose base is most fired up to actually bother to vote. That means it's less about debating issues or convincing anyone and more about firing up the base with fear, hate, or other base emotions that tend to translate easily to action.