polarization vs coexistence & cohesion

Doing stuff together, especially with people from different backgrounds than our own, is going to be really important for the future of the country. And it’s going to take a set of “muscular institutions”—institutions that aren’t bashful about asserting their prerogatives—to get us there.

Local journalism, no matter what form it’s in, truly does contribute to the fabric of a community. You’re not going to find too many large market sources of news reporting on your local city council or the high school basketball scores. Things like that might sound silly to a lot of people but truly are important to small communities... Keeps us... See more

Not all conflict is bad. Disagreement — over taxes, education, or policy — is essential to a healthy democracy. But affective polarization isn’t about differing ideas. It’s about identity.

It emerges when people begin to dislike, distrust, or even dehumanize others because of who they are — their ethnicity, region, religion, political affiliation,... See more

There are two mindsets that allow these atrocities to happen. One is dehumanizing , where you consider other groups of people less than human. Then there's demonizing , where you consider them to be fully human, which makes them all the more contemptible because of the evil choices that they've made. Daniel Goldhagen has set up a 2 X 2 taxonomy of... See more