America is a country that is now utterly divided when it comes to its society, its economy, its politics. There are definitely two Americas.
I live in one, on one block in Baltimore that is part of the viable America, the America that is connected to its own economy, where there is a plausible future for the people born into it. About 20 blocks away is another America entirely. It's astonishing how little we have to do with each other, and yet we are living in such proximity.

There's no barbed wire around West Baltimore or around East Baltimore, around Pimlico, the areas in my city that have been utterly divorced from the American experience that I know. But there might as well be.
We've somehow managed to march on to two separate futures and I think you're seeing this more and more in the west. I don't think it's unique to America.