Second, treating half of the country as posing a threat equivalent to a hostile foreign power can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. All of us — right and left, Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and progressives and centrists — are parts in a larger whole, a polity. We disagree with one another about what’s best for the whole, but we affirm a set of common rules for the sharing of power among the parts, for ruling and being ruled in turn. That’s what democratic politics are all about.

But it only works if we treat those on the other side of political disputes as fellow citizens, as parts in a common whole. Deny that basic equality and mutuality often enough and long enough and the sense of commonality will break down. The polity will divide into two and more pieces, each of them forming a new whole, each viewing the other as an Other.

Does the left do this with the right? It sure does. But the right does it, too — and since the 2020 election, it does it more intentionally and mendaciously, like it’s committed to the deliberate gutting of the country’s civic life for the sake of political gain.