Oh, that was always true. It just wasn’t possible for those people to spend all day yelling at each other for it.

The context of the disagreements was largely limited to newspapers and politicians. Some assumption of professionalism, editing and journalistic integrity was included with nationwide dialogues.

The internet, Twitter, political amplification, bot amplification, media consolidation, etc have made it 1000x worse.

Before, you could disagree on a topic and go about your day. Now you are beaten over the head with every topic constantly to remind you how much you disagree with it.