Conflictual or Consensual??

It can be argued that the political culture of the United States is either conflictual or consensual. The definition of political culture is a set of shared views and normative judgments held by a population regarding its political system. The United States is full of diversity and different groups of people, this can create issues and problems, making a more conflictual political culture. 

There are two main parties, conservative and liberal, that are constantly in conflict with each other. The two groups have very different views on most things. 
The map above is the presidential election in 2000. According to David Brooks, in his article One Nation, Slightly Divisible, "The electoral map of 2000 presidential race became famous: big blocks of red (denoting states that went for Bush) stretched across the heartland, with brackets of blue (denoting states for Gore) along the coasts." The 2000 election was the main start to the division of people based off of political belief and it has created a conflictual culture. Brooks also stated in his article the differences between liberals and conservatives, or blue America and red America. "People in Blue America, which is my part of America, tend to live around big cities on the coasts. People in Red America tend to live on farms or in small towns or small cities far away from the coasts. Things are different there." In a video published by Vox, it says that maps, such as the one above, are actually "misleading" and "unhelpful". The coloring of the map makes it seem like the red won by way more than they actually one by, and that's because most red states have less electoral votes than the blue. In the 2000 election, Bush won with a total of 271 votes from the electoral college, and Gore lost to Bush with a total of 266 votes. The maps should be arranged in a different way to help people with a better visual representation.

Social media has a big influence on how people think and act today. In an infographic that showed the two parties differences, it showed how liberals feel the government should be on social media, posting everything that's going on, to keep all people with the same amount of information. Whereas the conservatives feel that the government should have nothing to do with social media, they feel that if the government gets on social media it will allow them more power, meaning the power for the people becomes more limited. The conservatives want as much power they can have to keep their freedom above everything else. But, the liberals, they want the government to have more power and make sure everybody is treated equal and fair, keeping equality above everything else. 
So based off of all the evidence, the political culture of the United States in a conflictual due to the conflict between opposing sides. Maybe in the next few years, while Donald Trump is president, the conflict will come to an end and the country will join as one, as he said he is going to do in his winning speech in 2016.