I grew up in an Italian household where everyone loudly disagreed, and I listed to quite a bit of sports talk radio in NY. As "uncivil" as both of those things can be, there was comfort in knowing that if you were right, you could pump your fist & laugh, but if you were wrong...

...if you were wrong, you swallowed your pride (your feelings didn't matter because you were incorrect), you took your ribbings, and you acknowledged your defeat. And maybe moved on to argue the next point.

But where we are as a country with people dug in on ideology, brainwashed by propaganda (and the inability to even see it because of confirmation bias) and unable to agree on a shared set of facts is dangerous.

And let's be clear: this is largely a right-wing phenomenon. A GW poll from last year found Republicans are the ones most against compromise -- 66% of Democrats favored it vs. just 36% of Republicans https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2019/01/16/many-americans-say-they-want-politicians-to-compromise-but-maybe-they-dont/

John Boehner knew this when he took over his ill-fated speakership on the back of the Tea Party tiger. On @60Minutes in 2010, he said he rejects the word.

"I made it clear I am not gonna compromise on my principles, nor am I gonna compromise the will of the American people."

The "will of the American people" is also something politicians often get wrong. They seem to interpret the will of only some of the American people -- about, close to or a little more than half, generally. That's not the "will of the American people."

This rise of intransigence was weaponized and put on steroids by GOP Senate leader McConnell. He filed a record number of motions invoking cloture during the Obama years. It's raw political power, going against the good-faith spirit of good governance.

McConnell disliked the Tea Party and tried to crush its opposition in 2014, but his tactics have kept him in power. It + Tea Party ideology allowed space for Trumpism to rise. Trump poured on gasoline, bringing out people's worst, most visceral instincts.

That combined with a conservative media echo chamber that muddies basic facts and makes the media an enemy (which we are not) rather than arbiter of the truth (which we try hard to be) has done excessive damage to the ability to have a shared sense of unity.

Fox deserves a lot of the blame for laying this groundwork. When a judge says one of your top primetime people can't be convicted of slander because no "reasonable" person would believe him, where are we?

U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil:

The "'general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not 'stating actual facts' about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.' " ...

"Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes." https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-believe-the-facts-tucker-carlson-tells-you-so-say-fox-s-lawye

Yet... Fox now isn't even far enough for where the right-wing movement is heading. Trump promotes conspiracy theories, undermines free and fair elections, and thereby democracy, and it's only being lapped up by new, more extreme outlets.

And it's all being enabled by players who should know better, but who are looking to profit either financially or politically by riding this riptide.

We are already in many ways through the looking glass or over the rainbow as @johnson_carrie might say. If we can't agree on a shared set of facts, it's nearly impossible to do anything, let alone govern, create policies that solve problems or have unified national identity.

Instead, we're heading for trench warfare w/ endless exec orders & majority rules, where whoever has 50+1 sets the agenda and policy -- only to see them reversed by the next administration. This is a very different place than where this country has been for generations, if ever