Beyond the Alarm Bells: Finding Common Ground in Polarized Times

We tend to focus on battles over specific issues — gun laws, immigration policy, abortion — but lasting change in the United States must go deeper than efforts to reform individual policy areas. It will require a majority of Americans coming to believe that what we have in common with other Americans is greater than our differences. For many of us,

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For a culture struggling with extreme political polarization, moving toward a depressive position would mean fostering a collective capacity to see political opponents as complex, nuanced individuals rather than entirely negative or hostile figures.

In the end, most Americans want America to work. They know we disagree with one another. They don’t want us to hate one another. These divisions exist not just in the country but also in our communities, in our families. They’re painful. They want politicians capable of making that problem better, not worse.

We have begun to privilege the symbolism of victory, the more theatrical elements and outward displays that constitute expression of our own moral superiority, over actual, and often less than visible, advances and improvements in standards of living and quality of life. And yet it is the zealous pursuit of those advances and outcomes that forms

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