A Complete National Disgrace: Note for a Discussion, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United."

David Brooks, The New York Times, Oct. 4, 2018

The Kavanaugh hearings as American nadir.

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Over the past few years, hundreds of organizations and thousands of people (myself included) have mobilized to reduce political polarization, encourage civil dialogue and heal national divisions.

The first test case for our movement was the Kavanaugh hearings. It’s clear that at least so far our work is a complete failure. Sixty-nine percent of Americans in one poll called the hearings a “national disgrace,” and the only shocking thing is that there are 31 percent who don’t agree.

What we saw in these hearings was the unvarnished tribalization of national life. ...

With tribal warfare all around, uncertainty is the one state you are not permitted to be in.

This leads to an epidemic of bigotry. ... It was bigotry against preppy lacrosse players that led to the bogus Duke lacrosse scandal. ...

The members of the public no longer reason with one another. They fall into predictable party-line formation and then invent post-hoc, bad-faith rationalizations to give cover to their ideologically driven positions (Drank too much! Bad temperament! Bad yearbook entry!).

It’s clear that we need a new sort of environmental movement, a movement to police our civic environment. That environment isn’t polluted by a vague condition called “polarization.” It is polluted by the specific toxic emissions we all produce in our low moments. Those emissions have to be precisely identified, classified, called out as shameful. ...