> This could be personal (should partisans become less selective?)
The author tells people what to do, with, one would assume, no chance of success
> or societal (how could we reduce partisanship?).
The author proposes, well, I've no idea really, some form of radical social reform? How would one do that, artificially? Is it even desirable?
> Even just asserting with evidence "nothing can be done, and here's what's in store for society" would be something.
The author makes wide-ranging predictions based in a political moment (these are rarely if ever accurate, realistically).
Honestly, all of the above are, I think, common _failings_ of this sort of article and the author has done well to avoid them.
I feel like back in the day, the political spectrum was more narrow and although there were disagreements it was more on how to apply the law, not on if a law should exist at all.
Roe v Wade for example is from 1973. This law was established in my childhood, and as a nominal conservative I support it. Removing it is a radical change, leading to an alien landscape where people are fleeing newly antiabortion states and refusing job offers on the basis of what laws they have to live under. Life, death, and medical care are too fundamental to be left to the states. If you do, then do you really have a strongly knit country?
I’ve digressed a bit, but I think the stakes have changed so people on both sides of the spectrum share little common ground.
The trouble, there, is that the modern American mainstream right (and to a large extent the right, or at least the far-right, in most developed countries), _is not conservative_; in general it's far more radical, and wants to make far more sweeping changes, than the mainstream left.
There was a fairly long period when the political right heavily overlapped with 'conservatives', that is people who are perhaps overly into Chesterton's fence, but that's largely over now.
> leading to an alien landscape where people are fleeing newly antiabortion states and refusing job offers on the basis of what laws they have to live under.
I would note that that people having to be conscious of repressive state laws isn't _all that alien_; ethnic minorities in the US have moved states based on the laws they'd be living under for literal centuries, and LGBT people have similar concerns (it wasn't even legal to be gay nationwide in the US until 2007, for instance). The difference here is the abrupt _removal_ of pre-existing rights, of course.
As a post-conservative (hard right for two decades), I agree with this. I also think the left had a part in our arrival here. ex: I think ignoring the rural poor for generations whizzed away a lot of good will. In this, the left clearly lost their way.
But I also keep coming back to one overriding factor: That no one anywhere wants to clean their own house. No matter what I belong to now or have ever been a part of - that nature either dominates or barely doesn't.
Back in the day it worked because the gap between Democrats and Republicans was relatively narrow. Can't imagine a marriage where one person is a Trump republican and the other a liberal democrat working out.
I know more Republicans who vote for them despite their social issues than do. Trying to predict anyone's views based on the D/R is a gamble at best.
We discussed and had opinions on these things but they were mostly abstract as far as our marriage was concerned. One exception might have been abortion. Our marriage followed her unexpected pregnancy. Though she was strongly in favor of legalized abortion, she was at least as strong against having one herself.
> Back in the day it worked because the gap between Democrats and Republicans was relatively narrow. Can't imagine a marriage where one person is a Trump republican and the other a liberal democrat working out.
This is it. I don't think it was narrow before. It's that today the distance is far greater and it's turned into a DMZ where people get shot if they try to cross.