Political polarization

So, and I often think you've got to put populism alongside two other Ps.

neither of which the title of my book, which is Polarization and Post-Truth.

And Trump is the driver of these things.

He's the one that has the most noise around it.

John, now let's hear from you.

You teach a class called How to Think in an Age of Political Polarization.

What led you to start that course? And I've heard you say you're a theology professor who now teaches politics.

My story starts around the same time as Stephanie.

That's a good place to start when you're unsure of a class first semester.

Freshmen are easy to impress.

experimental seminar called How to Think in an Age of Political Polarization, as you said.

And the first word in that title is important because it wasn't the word what, it was how.

This was a report, um, that was, uh, produced by the Senate Intelligent com- Intelligence Committee in 2018.

Um, and you will also note there is, um, a report called the IRA and Political Polarization in the United States 2015 through 2017.

You might ask, why does that matter? Why are we talking about this right now? Well, I think that if we don't understand our history and where we've come from, even when that history comes from outside the United States, we are bound to repeat it.

Now, what the, uh, Russian trolls did, Russian bots did, is they created Um, the IRA, the, uh, the, um, [lips smack] the IRA from, from Russia, the Internet Research Agen-Agency, created these accounts that looked like they were Black.