100% agree that the USA is a special case. The country's geography (occupies a significant, contiguous portion of the continent) and legacy as the "last remaining superpower" basically requires a non-trivial amount of effort for most Americans to be exposed to non-American anything, let alone people. On top of that, the two-party duopoly is so entrenched in (and fabricated by) the ossified voting & election system that it becomes very hard to separate "fighting for what you believe in" from "fighting against the 'other half' of the country".