...In One Chart

I don't know that it's as much of a problem as people make it out to be that partisans look to their counterparts on the other side of the political spectrum when they are searching for monsters. What is a problem, I suspect, is their unwillingness to rest until they find one.

While I knew a lot of obnoxious people when I was younger, it dawned on me fairly early that they weren't motivated by malice. It took a few years longer, but I learned to extend that understanding of people to broader and broader groups, until my default position was that no-one, or almost no-one, ever acted simply out of some love of evil. And I'll admit that I take a certain amount of flack for that. For some people, there will always be monsters in the world that wear human faces.

As negative partisanship becomes more and more prevalent in the United States, it appears to feed on itself, as partisans not only whip up fear of the other, but take the fact that speakers on the other side are whipping up fear as proof of malevolent intent, and thus, a reason to be afraid.

A politically-engaged acquaintance of mine noted that as Democrats and Republicans grew more convinced of the need to defend themselves from some existential threat posed by the other, the nation was at risk of plunging into open conflict.

"That won't happen because people will be too quick to defend themselves," I replied. "It will happen because someone will decide that the best way to defend themselves is to shoot first." And to the degree that partisans do actually see one another as brainwashed, hateful, racist monsters, they're also likely to see one another as too much of a threat to be allowed to act first.