Two Universes

Sometimes, vigorous disagreement stimulates people to think more intelligently. Not this year, when the country’s deep and centrifugal divisions, its blood-feud loathings, have caused Americans in the millions to abandon thinking altogether, even as they have given up on compromise. More and more of us have shut down the possibility that we might change our minds. In 2020, a mind open to the other side’s point of view—a mind capable of truly understanding that point of view—is rare.

Read all of Lance Morrow's essay in City Journal.