IMO the entire narrative that Americans are so divided is largely an illusion. People are highly divided over wedge issues in online arguments.
If you turn off the internet, the phone and FOX/CNN/MSNBC people are pretty much the same.
Sporting events are a good example of reality. If the media narratives were true getting a 100k people in a sports stadium would result in utter chaos.
We are certainly not as divided as in the 60s. That is so apparent if you read any history from that time.
Actually, if we suffer from anything it is exactly represented by Dalio. Conflating extreme wealth accumulation with extreme intelligence and wisdom. The ideas of billionaires are given far too much weight. Not based on the ideas themselves but on the size of their net worth.
IMO if Feynman or Einstein were alive today no one would listen to them, "If you are so smart why don't you have a billion dollars???"
I hear people say that our response to 9/11 shows that the terrorists won. I think actually bin Laden did a huge favor to the military industrial complex - they won.
What really does seem to be the sad, sad reality is that America needs external enemies or else it feeds on itself. Since the fall of the USSR politics have gotten steadily nastier, but all the sudden people are finding lots of common ground in solitary against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
But will that solidarity last more than a few news cycles?