Political extremism persists because it's politically successful in places where political moderacy isn't. Us Canadians aren't better than Americans, we have a

Political extremism persists because it's politically successful in places where political moderacy isn't. Us Canadians aren't better than Americans, we have a system that allows people to vote more closely to their values and (somewhat) avoid polarization. It's not perfect and a lot of the issues come down to being a "2 Party Lite" instead of a full multi-party democracy. In my opinion, American Exceptionalism is not a pretension that the USA is the best, but a general assumption that culture primarily drives a nation's systems and not the other way around.