Divisi. Politica, società e conflitti nell’America del XXI secolo

How did we get here? Why have the US become a place of such intense and permanent conflicts that a civil war seems like a real possibility? The extreme violence of recent years – culminating in the assault on Capitol Hill in 2021, and the attempted assassination of Donald Trump during his rally in Pennsylvania in 2024 – is just the tip of the iceberg. Behind this, there are thirty years of “American polarizations”: after winning the Cold War, the United States has gradually slipped into a state of constant confrontation, where opposing blocks fight over abortion, taxes, healthcare, education, immigration, guns, and minority rights. But, as the author points out, this political radicalization was created, shaped, and directed from the top by consensus leaders – mainly conservatives, and long before Trump’s rise – who shamelessly built their fortunes by stoking the fires of social, cultural, racial, economic, religious, and territorial polarizations. Added to this are the clashes between real material interests: corporations against unions, emerging minorities against white revanchists, the super-rich against the middle class. By analyzing the roots and characteristics of this conflict, the book aims to determine which of these tensions are rooted in uniquely American events and which also challenge European societies and democracies. In this sense, it is also a journey inside ourselves, “Americans by reflection.”