Interesting piece. I would quibble with one part. At the end they imply that the contention in the country is reconcilable because the extremes do not represent

Interesting piece. I would quibble with one part. At the end they imply that the contention in the country is reconcilable because the extremes do not represent the majority. Now the last time Americans had an irreconcilable difference was the Civil War. We do not have good statistics from that time but there is some evidence that the extreme positions (i.e. abolition vs. pan-American slavery) were not held by a majority of the people in the country. One example I'll give is that even after the South withdrew from the U.S. House and Senate, those bodies still struggled to pass legislation freeing and or assisting black Americans. This indicates to me that not even the majority of the new Republican party was radical abolitionist. I guess my point is that just because the extremes are confused about how America feels, that doesn't mean they aren't driving us towards irreconcilable conflict. Now, I'm not one of those that thinks an intra-American conflict is forthcoming. But I would guess that if you modeled various internal conflicts throughout the history of nations, you wouldn't find many where roughly half the population stood solidly behind one idea and the half stood firmly behind another. I think in most you'd actually find something a lot like this. Two outlying groups driving the discourse against each other and a constituency of allies on each side that can't break away for various reasons.