A Deeper Dive on Tribalism: On the Eve of the 2024 U.S. Election

Political discourse now echoes the darkest moments before the Civil War. If we haven’t seen an event on the Senate floor like the 1856 caning of Charles Sumner, when Representative Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from South Carolina, used a walking cane to attack an abolitionist Republican from Massachusetts, the January 6th perpetrators did far worse in order to get into the Senate Chamber.

Call it Trump Derangement Syndrome if you must but count me among the less surprised at the caning of Mookie Betts in the Dodgers-Yankees World Series. Yankees fan Austin Capobianco grabbed Betts’s glove with both hands and pulled the ball out. Capobianco’s friend, John Peter, grabbed Betts’s non-glove hand.

Sign of the times? You bet.