It was a spring afternoon in Istanbul, and I was talking with a woman in beige pumps and pearls who was angry about her government. It was taking the country in the wrong direction, she said, and she had come out with thousands of other people to protest. People from poor areas who supported the government were going against their self-interest. “They’re only being manipulated,” she said.

Fast-forward 10 years to 2017. I am standing in a crowd of women wearing fleeces and sensible shoes in Washington, D.C. Everything feels oddly familiar. They were angry about the election and worried that it would take the country in the wrong direction. Many people who supported the new president had voted against their interests, they said.

I have covered political divides in Turkey, Russia, Pakistan and Iraq. The pattern often goes like this: one country. Two tribes. Conflicting visions for how government should be run. There is lots of shouting. Sometimes there is shooting.

Now those same forces are tearing at my own country.

Increasingly, Americans live in alternate worlds, with different laws of gravity, languages and truths. Politics is raw, more about who you are than what you believe. The ground is shifting in unsettling ways. Even democracy feels fragile.