See polarised politics like in much of the US now, with no more common ground in the middile, or at least not sufficient to reach respectful behaviour and willingness to reach compromises. Instead, you have extremes left and extremes right, and both hack at the middle and kill it, and seek to destroy the other. Power at all and any cost, is the motto, and it means: at ANY cost. Compare to what the NZZ article said.
You have whole social classes (not only in the US, but in other countries as well), whole branches of professions that have strong tendencies for this or that party. Often they get educated into being so. German media insiders and the educaitons ector are xtrenmely mleft leanign since the 60s, and have been systantcially tunbre dinto beign that. The US military has a strong bias towards Republicans, by family traditions and habit. Entrepreneurs used to be often anti-socialist. And so on and on.
Being of this and that political opinion is by far not just a question decided on by reason and free will. We all are victims of our past, biography, circumstances, its our past that has brought us to where we are today. The secret rulers of our lives are - hormones, btw. And where we want to decide independent from these, its a fight for a lifetime. We can overcome the tyranny of hormones, but it really is an effort, and certain biological traits defining us as humans being and biological entities we can never overcome. It is no compliment to our ego, yes, but thats how it is, I think. A hormone-driven automat, hidden under a thin layer of "civilizationalism" and a concepot of free will that to significant degrees in my opinion is just illusory. Freud knew it, and he was right. And yes, I see links between the "unconsciousness", and hormones. The one may be an expression of the other, or a way in which it brings itself to effect. Its just names we attach to things.
I mentioned hooliganism, and intentionally so, since this is a very specific thing, coming from Britain, attached to football, and describing a certain fan culture with the focus on a tribal cult defining "identity", and that is where indeed "cult" is also playing strong. Its about "us" versus "them", it is about irrational attachmenet to claimed territory, streets and blocks, its about fight for what is claimed to be honour but indeed is just a fetish or totem. Last but not least: action. You know the film "Fight Club"?
I think the elements of free choice, reasonability, intellectual decision forming, get fundamentally overestimated in the going of politics. Politicians learn how to press buttons in people that are connected to much lower instincts needs and desires; they aim at making reason and logic and intellect ignored and bypassed instances, they instead appeal to the emotional levels in people. Some play the keyboard subtle, but not any less underhanded, others slam the keyboard angrily with both fists, and yell and scream and stomp their feet to it. Both is not the music I like, and I am also no instrument to be played by others. Hence my hostility to politics in general, and politicians in special. They appeal to the worst in man, manipulating him this way, and often enough bring out the worst in man, thta way turning him from a victim into an accomplice and making him one of theirs. In the end, and this I am convinced of ver ytrongly now at this pohas eof my life, every political activity and ambition sooner or later must and will turn the spocila order into that of fascist collectivism, it cannot be aovided, its like evertyhing that lives grows old and heads for its death.