I'm not sure about that. Polarization in the United States has certainly ebbed and flowed over time, but if you study history, there has been a rough liberal-c

I'm not sure about that. Polarization in the United States has certainly ebbed and flowed over time, but if you study history, there has been a rough liberal-conservative dichotomy in nearly every society I can think of, going back at least hundreds of years. There's a great podcast actually, Revolutions, by Mike Duncan - it devotes a season to each of several famous historical revolutions. Currently it's in the last season, on the Russian revolution, which is particularly interesting in the present day, as it plants the seeds for modern Russia. But given that these revolutions span centuries, it's really striking how many commonalities they have, and the echoes you can hear in modern discourse. For example, liberals are generally agitating for greater democratic freedoms, or in non-democratic societies, at least freedom from oppression. Conservatives are, as the name suggests, generally dissatisfied with the pace of change, and in favor of maintaining current power structures. Also, revolutions are generally presaged by exactly the kind of breakdowns in communication described here. Increased polarization, unwillingness to give the 'other side' any kind of a political win, even if it's beneficial for everyone, etc. So yeah, while I could see that digital communication might have been a catalyst for our current situation, for the most part this all looks very familiar. And as the article describes, the likely result doesn't look good.