Eduardo M. Peñalver

Oct 7, 2024 | commonwealmagazine.org | Eduardo M. Peñalver |Peter Quinn |George Scialabba

By some measures, political polarization in the United States is as pronounced today as it has been at any moment since the Civil War. As Rachel Kleinfeld recently observed, no wealthy, mature democracy has been as polarized, and for as long, as the United States. As a result of this polarization, people who disagree politically have stopped engaging with one another—or, at least, stopped engaging productively.