A impolite but incoherent comment by President Donald Trump last week revealed the damage partisanship has done to America’s body politic. The president described a group of Hispanic gangsters,or illegal immigrants at large, or maybe both, or as “animals”. It is impossible to know whom he was referring to. Yet most Americans thought they knew. Republicans heard Mr Trump’s comment as tough talk on a bunch of killers,while Democrats heard it as a dehumanising slur against migrant parents and their children. Partisanship has altered Americans’ hearing.
It has also changed their view of what is required to be human. No longer able to fathom how their partisan rivals can hear, and also see, and judge and say the things they finish,Americans are increasingly liable to consider them lesser beings. Research by Alexander Theodoridis and James Martherus and colleagues finds that 77% of respondents considered their rivals to be less evolved humans than members of their own side. Americans are also prone, surveys...
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Source: economist.com