You may be looking at images of crowds storming the American capital. And you might see fellow citizens overseeing law enforcement officers in the name of an unfounded conspiracy, and you might see the beautiful halls of our democracy being demolished. And you may ask yourself, how did we get here?
The last four turbulent years have divided us into two. Americans now live on two completely different political planets, with two seemingly incompatible views. If you’re a Trump supporter, you’ve seen his presidency as four wonderful years of owning libraries, hitting the Deep State, and seeing the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln made America great again. If you are not, you have only lived through four hellish years of watching norms, laws, the status of the country in the world – even the foundations of democracy itself – being destroyed by an amoral narcissist who does not care how much damage he left in not waking her up.
Editing POLITICO’s Cartoon Carousel, a weekly comic strip compilation from across the political spectrum, I saw the hardening of this division in real time. While liberal cartoonists portrayed Trump’s presidency as an increasing series of atrocities, their counterparts on the right turned the businessman into a kind of cross-country folk hero. The differences have never been more extreme than last Wednesday, as a group of pro-Trump rioters stormed the US Capitol to try to stop Congress from confirming election results.