For a brief spell on Wednesday afternoon, the political divide tearing America ran through Peddler’s Village, a twee ramble of gift shops in bucolic New Hope, Pennsylvania, where Christmas wreaths are always in season and scented candles are abundant.
There, Frank Behlert, 71, diabetic and enraptured with Donald Trump, was blaming the liberal media’s hateful treatment of the president for the country’s polarisation as he tended his memorabilia store, Colt’s Sports Collectibles.
Why wouldn’t they — the media — publish stories about what he alleged was the Biden family’s corruption, he demanded?
He turned to Marcos Carballal, 21, a University of Pennsylvania student who had wandered into the shop and had the temerity to express sympathy for Joe Biden: didn’t universities teach students these days about the dangers of socialism, Mr Behlert asked.
“I’m not here to invalidate anyone’s opinion or their lived experience,” Mr Carballal replied in campus patois. But he saw things differently: “It’s a growing populist movement, and Trump is kind of an opportunist.”
They parted soon after, two more Americans not merely engaged in a disagreement about politics but seemingly inhabiting two different worlds, separated by age, education and their attitudes on social justice, the economy, race, patriotism and much else.
After the most bitter US presidential contest in recent memory — one that featured claims of voter suppression and voter fraud and those divides now appear deeper than ever.
In urban centres including New York City, enraged demonstrators confronted police on Wednesday night as they demanded that all votes be counted.
In Arizona, a crowd of more than a hundred Trump supporters — some armed — surrounded a voting centre, prompting police to send reinforcements to protect election workers.
The opposing sides came face to face on Thursday morning outside the Philadelphia Convention Center, where workers were toiling to count a haul of mail ballots that might decide the White House. “Count every vote!” screamed Biden supporters. “We want a tax cut!” a Trump woman hollered back.
So enraged was Laura Keane, a mother of three and Biden voter, that she looked ready to charge the Trump crowd even though she was — incongruously — clad in the workout attire of the middle-aged jogger.
“There’s moral values at stake in this election,” Ms Keane said, trying to explain the depth of her feelings.
The mood deteriorated as the day dragged on, with a beefy Trump supporter at one point leaning over a barricade and daring a reedy voting rights activist to punch him
