Read on Twitter
Something that I want to add to Shadi's tweets is the science shows polarization isn't based on where you are on the political spectrum. There are far left, far right, centrist people with lots of friends who disagree. It's based on unhealthy identification with labels
Basically, people tie up their psychological identity with a political brand, that's what causes them to have fragility when dealing w/opponents they perceive in a different camp. It's actually totally unrelated to what you actually believe about policy issues.
When you have that level of identification with politics, to where it's your primary identifier, you can even view any disagreement as you would a physical threat, your brain processes it in a similar way. Both interesting and terrible.
People will protest and say they're doing what they're doing for the world, for the unborn (conservatives), immigrants (liberals) whatever, but polarization is actually based on the person's psychological fragility, it's not about beliefs at all.
The good news is, hardened partisans who don't want to associate at all with people from another political party are a very small portion of the US population, they just happen to congregate on places like Twitter.
Heck, Cornel West, a Green Party/Bernie Sanders co-chair, goes around on college campuses condemning shut downs of conservatives. It's hard to get more left-wing than Cornel West. He just has a healthy self-identification.
Of course, people *feel* like they're doing something by hating some Other, that's why people do it, it feels good. The pleasure-sensing part of your brains activate when you punish or shame or express outrage. But it's not actually a political activity. It's all psychology...
It's probably easier if you grew up in a pretty conservative/lib state like me but didn't match its politics, you got used to it. If you're a vegetarian for moral reasons, it's even easier, basically everyone you know is doing something really immoral. But you're still friends!
Someone is definitely going to reply to me telling me I'm comparing animals to humans etc. which is an entirely uncompelling point to someone who thinks factory farms are tantamount to mass murder and will be definitely be seen as such within the next 200 years
Notice the above link is to the right-wing National Review, written by a Bush speechwriter who...thinks factory farms are mass murder and humanity has to move away from eating meat. See, a little ideological contamination won't kill you.
In fact, people who have mixed social groups -- social networks with both liberals and conservatives -- are more likely to vote based on policy than on blind party loyalty. Mixing with people is a great way to persuade them. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_hidden_benefit_of_disagreeing_about_politics
