I am the solution to polarization

Too many of us, metaphorically or literally, refuse to share a cabin with the “other side.”

Driving up to Gatlinburg, one woman mentioned several times that baby’s first girls’ trip would include Trump voters.

Without assuming anything about anyone specifically, many people have traumatizing histories with the kind of person they associate with Trump.

But putting known rapists and rape apologists aside, the average American increasingly believes that anyone who disagrees with them is their sworn enemy. Good evidence suggests that today, even more than in the past, too many of us assume that people who think, believe, and/or vote differently hate us and want us to suffer and die. “They” are bad people. “They” are irredeemable.

I blame media incentives and “the big sort.” As our neighborhoods, workplaces, volunteering opportunities, and book clubs homogenize we increasingly only spend time with people who agree with us politically. When we do encounter conflicting views, it’s mostly online, where we disproportionately see the wildest, most infuriating versions of dissenting opinions because they boost engagement.

The death of actual facts and reporting, filter bubbles online and IRL, and rage-bait content farming combine to make political discourse much more insular and nasty than in decades past.

My family is a case-in-point.