Tag: Polarization
The Doom Spiral of Pernicious Polarization
Until a few decades ago, most Democrats did not hate Republicans, and most Republicans did not hate Democrats. Very few Americans thought the policies of the other side were a threat to the country or worried about their child marrying a spouse who belonged to a different political party.
All of that has changed. A 2016 survey found that 60 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of Republicans would now balk at their child’s marrying a supporter of a
What Germany Can Teach America About Polarization
When Edmund Schechter, a Viennese Jew who fled the Nazis, arrived in postwar Germany in 1945, he encountered a “wasteland”—not just physically, he said, but “psychologically.”
All newspapers had ceased publication. Radio stations were destroyed and devoid of their Nazi staff. The “silent” media landscape provided “virgin territory” to “do all sorts of things really from scratch,” recalled Schechter, who had escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp to the United States only to head to Germany after World War II