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The Trump Era saw vicious political polarization. Has it cooled off under Biden?

  Here is an objective, documented fact: Republicans believe that there were two invasions of the Capital in January. The riot was a horrible debacle, to be sure, but if they’re being consistent, it’s a minor peccadillo compared to the second violation of that hallowed national sanctum: the moment Joseph R. Biden stole onto its steps to be sworn as our 46th president. According to  an NPR/PBS public opinion survey , just 24% of Republicans accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, with the majority of those remaining believing high members of the other party to have conspired to steal it in the single greatest act of political fraud in history. That is, almost half of the voting population believes that the United States is no longer politically legitimate, democracy has surrendered to an elaborate swindle, and the White House has been burglarized by the current administration. Surely this would be worse than any riot, if it were true. If anything, if people believed this,

"I am not an optimist.... I'm a very serious 'possibilist'... someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears without reason... I see all this progress, and it fills me with conviction and hope that further progress is possible. This is not optimistic. It is having a clear and reasonable idea about how things are. It is having a worldview that is constructive and useful." --Hans Rosling

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  We have much more work to do. But how can we do that work best if we do not know what has worked already? How can we achieve more success if we don't even have a clear idea of what success we have already managed?