Of course such feuds do sometimes fade and come to an end. But there are so many incentives working against it in 2021. The country is so closely divided, with the divisions so deep and with so little overlap between the factions, that each party feels it needs to promote panic to ensure maximal turnout. The prospect of the other side winning has become an existential threat to the country itself — and anyone on either side who resists the drive to demonize opponents gets treated like a traitor to the cause of defending against a diabolical enemy. This sense is amplified further by media companies that increase their profits by feeding the fires burning in the minds of partisans. Once again, I know where I stand. I don't lie awake at night fretting about "socialism." But I do consider the GOP's efforts to use various institutional tricks to win maximal power while failing to win popular majorities or even pluralities to be civically corrosive — and its Trump-inspired flirtation with outright defiance of the results of free and fair elections genuinely dangerous. But in truth, I don't simply, or even mainly, fear these developments because I see authoritarianism on the horizon (to paraphrase the headlines of countless opinion columns over the past few months). I fear them far more because such efforts are an expression of political desperation — the actions of a party that considers losing unacceptable. I also fear them because they will drive Democrats to their own acts of desperation, which will justify more Republican panic which will justify more Democratic alarm — with all of it, on both sides, motivated by the intensifying conviction that the only legitimate outcome is for one's own party to rule uncontested.