People tend to hang out with people they like. That usually means people with whom they share values and community and life experiences.

But now it appears that our political polarization has grown so wide that Americans who voted differently in 2016 don't want to hang out with each other.

That at least is the story from the Pew Research Center with regards to leftists.

That study found that 47% of liberal Democrats stated that if a friend voted for Donald Trump, it would

strain the friendship. For all Democrats, it was 35%. For Republicans, that number was just 13%

when applied to Hillary Clinton. Now, maybe that number would have changed if Hillary had won,

but there's more than a whiff of elemental scorn Democrats hold for Trump voters. They don't

see what was so bad about Hillary that would

necessitate a vote for Trump. They think a vote for Trump could never be made in a good faith

effort to help the country, but it was rather just an endorsement of Trump's worst behavior. This

feeling, combined with the fact that leftists live in bubbles, as Aaron Blake of the Washington

Post points out, 47% of people who voted for Clinton had zero Trump-supporting friends. That means that the left

will continue to polarize in pillory. Only 28% of Democrats today say they aren't stressed by talking

with those who differ on Trump, which means that the vast majority of Democrats won't even deign

to discuss the issues. That leads to less knowledge of the typical Republican and the lazy

intellectual construct that turns Trump voters

into an other to be opposed on grounds of supposed bigotry. That scorn will in turn drive more

and more conservatives into Trump's arms. Much of the Trump movement was built on a reactionary

and justified anger against leftist character assassination. The left solution, unfortunately,

seems to be just more character assassination. I'm Ben Shapiro. This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

So many things to talk about today.

I'm going to get to a lot of Hollywood because I saw Dunkirk last night, and it is just a stunning film.

...