My answer:
As much as I hate to say it, America. The idea of America. That we’re a representative Republic that practices Rule of Law and protects the rights of individuals.
It becomes more apparent each day that the nation has descended into oligarchy, and that there’s (at least) a two-tiered “justice” system – one for the politically powerful and one for the rest of us. And that the politically powerful don’t care if we know it anymore.
Our “Representatives” think themselves our rulers, our police forces are increasingly militarized and have the mindset to go with it. As one writer put it, “The military protects the state, the police protect the people. When the military become the police, the people become the enemies of the state.”
We’ve got one political side convinced that the other isn’t just wrong, misguided or ignorant, but EVIL. Since you don’t debate with evil, you don’t compromise with evil, you don’t tolerate evil, you destroy evil, that has been their goal since the 1960’s.
When the other side finally understands this is when we give up. An acquaintance recently observed:
A friend of mine who is a political activist said something interesting the other day, and that was for most people on the left political violence is a knob, and they can turn the heat up and down, with things like protests, and riots, all the way up to destruction of property, and sometimes murder… But for the vast majority of folks on the right, it’s an off and on switch. And the settings are Vote or Shoot Fucking Everybody. And believe me, you really don’t want that switch to get flipped, because Civil War 2.0 would make Bosnia look like a trip to Disneyworld.