Thanks, it's fascinating and a little scary to watch! The US has a huge influence on the world, particularly on the other western, anglophone democracies, so it feels important. I also have family and friends in various states.

My generation in the UK grew up with America being this shiny, free, wonderful, aspirational land over the sea, the land of Baywatch and Miami Vice and Disneyland and CocaCola all the other things. It really did appear to be the mythical shining light on the hill. I love visiting the US and have spent over a year there now, on and off. It is a varied land of contradictions and of very different values and lifestyles, a land of opulence, but also of left behind little places. But the politics ... it seems to have become pathological, and the population increasingly cynical about politicians, about the media and sources of information, to the extent that most trust seems gone and consensus reality seems to be frequently called into question (I'm not claiming this is unreasonable! Just observing).

These tropes are definitely present in the two countries I've called home, but to a much lesser extent, the poison doesn't seem to have permeated quite so far.

You do see stuff get thrown around on social media like "Make sure to take a pen to the voting booth so that they can't change your vote!" but it's fringe whackos. Even if the politicians themselves are disliked, the mechanics of democracy are usually pretty well trusted. IIRC in the last general election here one of the tiny right-wing parties tried some voter-fraud type rabble-rousing ahead of the poll, but they were largely ignored and pretty quickly contradicted by the Australian Election Commission.