Dan Balz writes,

a report issued Monday by the Pew Research Center paints a particularly stark portrait of a nation in which the most significant divisions are no longer based on race, class or sex but on political identity.

Read the whole thing. He refers to a new study that has made a splash. My random thoughts:

1. It is consistent with my impression that blog posts and comment threads have become more strident than they were when I first started blogging. In general, I think people are much more “dug in” than ever.

2. Another Pew Study suggested that a lot of “unfriending” on Facebook is based on politics.

3. I keep thinking that this correlates with the decline in religious affiliation. Some of the group-identity needs that religion used to absorb are now channeled into politics.

4. I wonder if Jonathan Haidt would have found less interesting results had he done his studies four decades ago, because political alignments were not as salient then.

5. I do not think that this will end well.