COVID-19’s shared mortal threat deepened rather than healed American polarization

Evidence

And then that asteroid arrived in the form of COVID-19. And Americans did not come together. Instead they became more polarized than ever. To be sure, consistent information about how to stop the spread of COVID-19 was difficult to pin down during the first few months of 2020. But familiar fissures emerged in answers to questions like the following: Who is to blame? Whom do we trust? And what should we do? The populist impulse stoked by white Christian nationalism shaped answers to all three questions. — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross, 126

Categorization

• XREF: Directly contradicts the ‘common enemy unites’ assumption tested by the asteroid thought-experiment in the previous passage; reframes pandemic behavior as polarization evidence rather than cooperation evidence. — connects to: Covid-era moral outrage on both sides converged into dehumanizing each other — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 394; Prominent leftists began shifting alliances toward the hard right during Covid — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 316; The pandemic generated new Islamophobic scapegoating across countries

Broader Connections

• Covid-era moral outrage on both sides converged into dehumanizing each other #corroborates (0.82) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 394
• The pandemic generated new Islamophobic scapegoating across countries #exemplifies (0.75)
• Prominent leftists began shifting alliances toward the hard right during Covid #expands (0.72) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 316