If you’re just waking up from a coma that felled you in 1995, Americans in 2021 hate each other. Polls released last week by the University of Virginia showed that “roughly 4 in 10 (41%) of Biden and half (52%) of Trump voters at least somewhat agree that it’s time to split the country, favoring blue/red states seceding from the union.” In addition, “a strong majority of Trump voters see no real difference between Democrats and socialists, and a majority of Biden voters at least somewhat agree that there is no real difference between Republicans and fascists.”
Some of this should be taken with a grain of salt. Respondents to polls increasingly understand their response as a free kick. Answering a pollster is a political action in itself, with no responsibility to the truth or your own reputation. No one is going to hold you accountable for your answer, so you can give the most partisan one imaginable. If you had asked me in an anonymous telephone poll whether Governor Andrew Cuomo was an organ-destroying bacterium dressed up in a human costume, I’d have said yes, immediately. If you had asked me the same question on live television, I’d have at least paused for a few seconds.
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