There are Worse Things than Polarization

Ezra Klein:

Things were far worse in the “golden age” of the 1950s and ‘60s than they are today. We often think of midcentury as a time of civility and compromise in our politics, but it was also an era when lynchings were common, Freedom Riders were brutally beaten, urban riots ripped across the country, and political assassinations were frequent. Things today are bad — and we should try to fix them — but nostalgia for our recent past is deeply misguided.