If attitudes don’t shift, a political dating mismatch will threaten marriage
November 22, 2023
Ideological polarization is now a mainstay of American politics. Millions of young Americans will go home this Thanksgiving and find themselves in uncomfortable situations with relatives — especially uncles, apparently — who love former president Donald Trump, hate vaccination or think the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection had very fine people on both sides.
In some ways, polarization is exactly what one would expect in a large, unwieldy democracy such as the United States’. Americans no longer agree on many questions of how to live or what to live for. These differences can’t just be papered over through good-faith dialogue — because they are real.
