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First past the post / winner takes all + tribalism. That's all there is to it. They do have some overlap, but not enough, with democratic values, however the only other options are: not voting, voting independent (aka throwing your vote away to them), voting rep.
Probably the people you know are center-right (for US standards, the rest of the world considers it hard right) with tinges of social democracy, liberalism, progressivism, maybe even communitarianism, but no such party can exist in the US. And thus, people have to decide which side of the fence they're on. Combined with the longing to belong to something and have a team to be on + US indoctrination and exceptionalism (namba wan, we da best, saluting the flag, ...), it's quite simple to get into a mind state where emotions reign over reason.
If the US allowed more options, I bet you they'd vote for it and probably be less hypocritical. How much less is unknown since even in other countries with a multi-party systems, people can get quite tribalistic.
Just FYI every time you say “the rest of the world” you should in fact be talking about the entire planet and not just Europe or the Western nations or the developed nations.
In this case much if not most of the world is still authoritarian to some and would never view American politics as “hard right” unless you are only talking about the last 2 years or so.
Your take is incredibly Eurocentric in this case.
Yeah, I see it now. My bad. I sound like a USAian talking about "the world series" that only happen in the USA. Thanks for pointing it out.
The “World Series” but is an excellent comparison. I’ll have to work that into this bit in the future as I have to point this out frequently.