I don't think Americans are particularly likely to think politics is one dimensional. Each of our two parties is composed of multiple subgroups whose ideals and interests don't match - they regularly have disputes among each other, and it's less common but far from unheard of for an interest group to migrate between parties. What we call a "party" just mixes in components of what a European-style system would call the "governing majority".

I think I generally sympathize with your point. There’s probably truth to that.

I think it’s also perilous to collapse “Americans” into zero dimensions by speaking as if they’re one entity with one perspective. I would bet my house that a frighteningly many millions of Americans DO see it as one dimensional tribalism.

The difference between the multiparty countries and the USA is that in the USA the compromises needed to form a government are made before you do the final vote. In some ways I think that's better because the parties have to have a fuller and more realistic platform than in Europe where you can get a bunch of parties in power only caring about a few issues each and the tradeoffs aren't presented upfront

I find it works amazingly well in Canada where there is commonly no one party in power. That any one party must get the support of one or more other parties to pass any bill. This creates mandatory compromise.

During a majority government where a single party has enough votes, I generally agree with you.

You are grossly overselling how "amazing" Canadian governance is.

Canada has essentially the same two party system as the US, with one of the two major parties winning literally every election in the last 100 years, and all but one election since the country's inception.

Occasional minority governments gave us some nice things, but that was decades ago, in a whole other world.

Canadian elections are cursed by FPTP much like the US is, and much unlike all the other developed countries that have true multi-party governance with some form of proportional representation.

FPTP caused the Liberal party to be in power in Canada for most governments until they were ejected from politics for gross corruption. And since then they've been put in the corner for a bit, and slowly are coming back to being the prevalent ruling party.

Justin Trudeau made a campaign promise a few elections ago about replacing FPTP for a multi turn system and after being elected, promptly setup a sham study, which unsurprisingly found out that Canadian voters would be oh so confused if FPTP was to be replaced by a multi turn election system.

I wouldn't say Canada fares much better, in the long term. At least the Liberals are pretty benign.

A two party system works. I'm from a country with a 20+ party system and it's dysfunctional. In addition, you can't lump Democrats or Republicans in the USA in their respective boats. There's a hundred shades of grey within each party. But rallying behind one candidate versus a hundred in a primary makes for a better setup than anything else I've seen in other countries.

I don't really agree with you but you shouldn't be grayed out. The idea of a dysfunctional government sounds bad, but ironically that is precisely what the Founding Fathers endeavored to create. And it sounds absurd for all the reasons you're certainly aware of. Yet is the opposite desirable? In modern US politics, parties have become capable of enacting pretty substantial change on very narrow margins. This can be good in one manner of thought because "good" change can happen at an accelerated rate.

The problem is "good" is subjective. It was big news when the 2016 election was decided by as few as 78,000 votes, yet the 2020 election was now decided by as few as 45,000 votes [1]. The one thing everybody would agree on is that the country (and world) would look radically different today had the US election in 2020 gone differently.

And so we're living in a boat that keeps getting increasingly violently rocked back and forth, all based on who wins a coin flip. A bit of dysfunction to cool things (and people) down doesn't seem so bad.

[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/18/how-2020-...

> yet the 2020 election was now decided by as few as 45,000 votes

In 2020, the popular vor difference was slightly over 7 million votes, and it went the same direction as the electoral college.

> It was big news when the 2016 election was decided by as few as 78,000 votes,

It was big news, because the electoral college vote went against the popular vote, which had 2.8 million more voting for Hillary Clinton.

> A bit of dysfunction to cool things (and people) down doesn't seem so bad

Yep!

> The one thing everybody would agree on is that the country (and world) would look radically different

Heck, I think even some other planets might be affected. Perhaps the very Black Hole in the center of the Milky Way would shed a tear or two.

> I don't really agree with you but you shouldn't be grayed out.

Yes, but herein lies the issue with any "downvote" mechanic. How it should be used compared to how it actually used is quite different.

The discussion on HN in general does not follow the guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Edit out swipes.

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.

> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".

And on and on, the amount of comments in this thread alone that don't stick to the guidelines is too high, but I think the moderation team is very small (just dang?)

> A two party system works.

It's not working in the US at present.