Partisan hostility has surged, offering a useful political refuge

We can leave it to political scientists and, eventually, historians to disentangle this bleak, hostile view of the opposition held by so many on the right from the media ecosystem that bolsters and feeds into it. There’s clearly at least some symbiosis, with Carlson and others on the network hyping overblown or invented allegations and the base seizing upon them. It is obviously the case that hostility points in both directions to some extent, as the graphs above indicate. But it is also obviously the case that there’s something different occurring on the right, among a group that is so dubious of their opponents that most say they think Democrats somehow engineered an undetectable process for stealing the 2020 election. That acceptance of Trump’s dishonest claims about 2020 no doubt contributes to the fertile soil enjoyed by those making claims about replacement theory: If Democrats have to steal the presidency (which, of course, they didn’t), why wouldn’t they engage in some inexplicable process for subverting America itself?