The United States is divided and I think arguably as divided as ever.

Many people agree on the division part, but the harder part is figuring out why.

What is the line that cuts this country essentially in half? And there

are a lot of really bad answers. I want to tell you what I think is the primary way in which this

country is divided. But for example, you sometimes hear, well, this is a country divided on race.

On the one hand, you have people who say it's racism that is dividing the country.

On the other hand, you have some racist people who say races are just too different. We can't live

together in harmony. But the point is you will often hear it is race that is dividing the country.

Now, of course, racism is a real thing. Racism shapes lives. But race doesn't

explain a nearly 50-50 divide in this country. And we've seen Latino and black voters

shifting towards Republicans. We've seen plenty of white voters in big cities voting for Democrats.

So the picture on race just isn't really

that clean to say this is the division in the United States. Well, what about class? You have a lot

of class reductionists and just people more broadly who say socioeconomic status class. This is really

the dividing line in the United States.

Usually it's rich versus working class.

But the numbers just don't really add up on that.

Most of the country is working or middle class and they're split right down the middle politically.

The rich are too small a slice to explain the entire deadlock and divide of this country. So then sometimes you'll

hear, well, it's a religious thing. It's atheists versus believers or it's even, you know,

you've got white evangelical Christians that lean one way and is Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, different

types of Christians. But you kind of have the same problem, which is that that doesn't really explain in a substantive

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