Various dynamic tensions can ease. The various hostilities between black and white, rich and poor, city and country and others can virtually disappear. The strongest dynamic tension in the nation today might best be described as teachers versus truants. To describe the worst problem as petulance does not sound like it is very serious. If the very foundations of morality and law are threatened that could be quite serious though.
The people who support the Republican Party are not so rich, and the people who support the Democratic Party are not so poor as is often generally assumed.
Although blacks do more often vote for Democrats, at the same time they are quite conservative and often not certain the Republican candidates are. The dynamic tension between conservative and liberal is struggling for definition. The struggle is more open in the Republican party where the Tea Party tends to direct efforts.
Just as there is confusion who are the conservatives, there is confusion who are the teachers. The "bad kids" have taken over the schools.
Democracy can lead to good government, but it makes a terrible science. Nixon is famous for saying that when the president does it, that means it is not illegal. The problem today is the widespread assumption that when the majority does it, that means it is not illegal. The truth is that the majority is not always right, even in a purely political sense, not in this country with its provisions for restraining the tyranny of the majority. More importantly the majority can be wrong in science. Science in its strict sense has never used a majority opinion to establish truth.
The "bad kids" have taken over the schools and threaten to take over the country. The confusing part for many people is that the bad kids try to do it in the name of science. It is not really science but a majority opinion held by people who failed science.
You can perhaps find it more on the internet than in "real" life, but it is still fair to say the opinion that people who believe in God must have failed science is "prevalent." If you believe in God prepare to be treated as a school dropout. The majority opinion appears to be that "science" has "disproved" the existence of God. The actual truth is that science never did any such thing. People who misread Darwin have long believed science did or would disprove the existence of God. However, since Thomas Hunt Morgan discovered the "chromosome" in the 1930s, science has found the likelihood of "random" assembly of life on a previously molten planet ever decreasingly likely. All these years later it is fair to say it required an intelligent designer, though that is not quite yet the majority opinion.
Articles suggesting "global warming" are also politics parading as science. While much of the focus of the criticism is how absurd it is to take the temperature of the "globe" to such a fine detail there is far less data on the fine detail of solar output. With no data on variations of solar output, there can be no scientific discussion of other factors on the temperature of the globe, even knowing what that is. While it is true that the eventually necessary conversion to renewable energy sources could well require far lower consumption levels than fossil fuels are currently consumed, global warming has little to do with that serious debate. The global warming arguments only tend to make mean people look stupid.
People who believe the country should allow more immigration often attack laws that have nothing to do with the number of legal immigrants, only what sort of documents they should have. It appears they do not understand government. They might get more immigrants using a more systematic way.
People who failed economics often try to regulate business by government because they don't understand how economics might do that better.
The Democratic Party is not representing the poor so well. It is not representing blacks so well. It is not representing liberals so well. It is representing people who failed science. It is representing people who will never realize they failed science so long as they are in the majority. The Republican Party won't be doing much better, at least not until it decides what it is going to do.
Not only have the bad kids taken over the schools, they have taken over many churches. In religion the word "freedom" meant free from material entanglements. The word has lately been taken to mean free to pursue a multitude of entanglements. A definition of marriage that ensures people take care of their own children actually sets people free from having the state involved in their care or perhaps less willing step parents involved. The new definitions that openly reject parental responsibility don't really "free" anyone.
People who have money tend to throw it at medical problems their family members might develop. Doctors have typically allowed them to do that even when the prospects are not so good, and of course being very honest about the prospects. Much of the spending in the health care bill is for treatments without much prospect. That is because people who failed science think they know science.