by wasoxygen

Just days before one of the most consequential elections in American history, we’re in hell. There are myriad reasons — a global plague, racial injustice leading to unrest in the streets, deadly wildfires attributable to an international environmental crisis that has become exasperatingly susceptible to political ping-pong, a worldwide rise in authoritarian regimes — but we are in hell mostly because our very way of life seems imperiled by the politics of the times, whichever side you are on. That’s the thing: There are two sides, and nothing safely in between. The current political climate has riven families, destroyed ancient friendships, tested marriages.

The stakes are so elevated, the alternatives so stark, the consequences so potentially dire, that the principal emotion generated — inflamed by highly partisan media, and social media, on the left and the right — is something that very much resembles hatred.

Weingarten