A country born by breaking with a king inherits dissent as a birthright. Generation after generation faces its test of conflict management: crafting the Constitution itself, with all its convictions and compromises; balancing local vs. federal power centers; a Civil War exposing fissures in democracy’s bedrock; and on and on, battles over rights and responsibilities, suffrage, prohibition, isolation vs. intervention, and then the serial upheavals over justice for multiple marginalized groups—Black, female, gay, trans. Each era is tasked with not only choosing its fights but also deciding how to fight them.
Our current crisis of division, once again manifest as violence, feels shocking but not sudden; the dread has been deepening for years, a defining quality of this century that began with an election that ended in a tie. As our information streams fill with acid, it eats at grace and trust. Americans have always disagreed, exercised muscles of reason and passion to press for progress and a vision for the common good that we don’t necessarily hold in common. Do we care more about freedom or equality? Privacy or security? Being a leader in the world or tucked in safely at home with oceans to buffer us? Figuring that out was the heart of the democratic challenge, but the information technologies allegedly designed to connect the world conspire to dismantle the values that process depends on.
The tragedy, but maybe also the opportunity, of this moment is that relative to past brawls, Americans are largely united on key issues—even if you would never know it from the temperature of the debate. “Red states” from Arkansas to Missouri to Florida pass minimum-wage referendums by fat majorities; Kansas votes to protect access to abortion. Two-thirds of Democrats agree that the situation at the border is a problem; more than 60% of people think it’s........