Will we have a civil war?

My 92-year-old aunt asked me this when I was in South Dakota this past summer. She was not the only one who alluded to such deep divisions. In my column for EW Magazine, I wrote about the dire apocalyptic warnings that were offered to me in both the Netherlands and the United States. In the case of the dire predictions of a war between the Democrat “blues” and the Republican “reds,” these were given in serene settings—in what I might describe as the bounty of American goodness.

So, what is going on? Why can America be a great place with wonderful people, but those same people believe in scary, divisive narratives?