I Don't Know How This Changes, But it Has to Do So

In a survey two researchers  conducted in April 2025, they found that 37 percent of Americans reported having had a political breakup, mostly with friends.

That is horrific. It means the tolerance and respect for political differences a democracy might require has been widely abandoned by a significant percentage of citizens. 

 

source: Mertcan Güngör , Peter Ditto 

Of those who reported political breakups, 62 percent had a breakup with a friend (23 percent of the full sample), 40 percent with a family member (15 percent of the sample), 29 percent with a coworker (11 percent of the sample), and 10 percent with a romantic partner (4 percent of the sample), the researchers report. 

Most (56 percent) reported losing more than one kind of relationship (21 percent of the sample). 

In another survey we conducted a week before the 2024 election, 69 percent of breakups happened with a friend; 20 percent happened with a family member, five percent with a romantic partner and two percent with a co-worker. 

Most of us might instinctively recognize that political polarization can weaken a democracy because it turns fellow citizens into enemies. 

In healthy democracies, opposing sides are seen as political adversaries to compete against and at times to negotiate with.In deeply polarized democracies, the other side comes to be seen as an enemy needing to be vanquished.

The danger then is that legitimate policy compromise comes to be seen instead as moral failure. So polarization then leads to, and rewards, extreme positions. And that makes compromise much more difficult, if not impossible. 

Such polarization also erodes trust in government and leaves urgent issues unresolved, as the different factions cannot find common ground. Worse, it leads to violence. 

As for me, I have no choice but to reject polarization. That doesn’t mean accepting a “squishy middle” between the extreme positions of either dominant party. It does mean rejecting the idea that either party any longer has the “best interests of the nation” uppermost and consistently in mind.