02256cam a2200325 i 4500 412079465 TxAuBib 20200203120000.0 191209s2020||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u bl2019037462 9781476700328 HRD 28.00 147670032X HRD 28.00 TxAuBib rda Klein, Ezra, (journalist), 1984- Why we're polarized [BOOK] / Ezra Klein. Why we are polarized. First Avid Reader Press hardcover edition. New York : Avid Reader Press, 2020. xxiii, 312 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Includes bibliographical references and index. In Why We’re Polarized, Klein reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics. Over the past fifty years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. These merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together. Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the twentieth century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and one another. And he traces the feedback loops between polarized political identities and polarized political institutions that are driving our system toward crisis. Provided by publisher. 20200203. Polarization (Social sciences.) Right and left (Political science.) Identity politics United States. Political culture United States.