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How dark passions came to rule US politics
Duelling fears, hatreds, resentments are undermining the emotional foundations on which liberalism depends.
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Trump supporters at a rally in Iowa in July.
PHOTO: AFP
David Brooks
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Sometimes when I have nothing better to do, I think back on the US elections we had in the before times – when, say, Mitt Romney ran against Barack Obama or John Kerry ran against George W. Bush. I try to figure out why politics and society in general felt so different then.
It’s not because we didn’t have big disagreements back then. The Iraq War kicked up some pretty vehement arguments. It’s not because we weren’t polarised. Pundits have been writing about political polarisation since at least 2000 and maybe well before.
