-Funding for "America at a Crossroads with Judy Woodruff" provided by the following and viewers like you.

Thank you.

-What do we want?

-Justice!

-When do we want it?

-Now!

-We won't go back!

-We won't go back!

-Shame on you!

Shame on you!

-We are living through an extraordinary time... -We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.

-I believe America's at an inflection point, one of those moments that determine the shape of everything that's to come after.

-Would you agree with Governor Carter, Dr. Kreps, that it's difficu It's a far different world than the one I witnessed when I first came to Washington, in 1977, to cover President Jimmy Carter.

I stayed on to report on every administration since, interviewing presidents, senators, representatives, and many more on both sides of the aisle about a range of issues.

A feud that has been simmering an d a group of conservative Republicans finally reached the boiling point.

But over time, I be that things were shifting in Washington, that the tone was changing.

-I'm always delighted to yield to -You deliberately stood in that well before and empt and challenged these people, and you challenged their Americanism.

And it's the lowest thing that I've ever in my 32 years in Congress.

-The big debates over differences l and spending, conflicts overseas, and the rights of minorities became more personal and meaner.

-The reforms I'm proposing wou are here illegally.

-You lie!

[ -Away from Washington, there seemed to be a growing se in this country, punctuated by terrible acts o based in hatred of race, religion, and politics.

-Giffords remains sedated three days after being shot in the head at point-blank range.

-This individual came here with the expressed purpose of taking as many black lives as he possibly could.

-A sense of division only accelerated under President Donald Trump and which nearly tore the country apart.

-Chaos erupted at the U.S. Capitol today when... -Even now, as the memory of January 6th fades and the justice system reckons with what happened that day... -A federal grand jury here has indicted former president Donald Trump on four counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of an official proceeding.

-...the country seems stuck in an identity crisi with divisions threatening the very foundation th ings like trust in elections, the rule of law, and respect for free and open dialogue.

And you started...

Since stepping a our nightly program last year, I've talking to Americans of all walks of life... -As soon as Donald Trump became president, I mean, the party was foreign to me.

-We have a lot of issues that are becoming partisan, but, really, they're human issues.

And human issues should never -Our country is going into such a liberal pathway that it's almost gone too far.

-I've been trying to better unde what's driving Americans apart.

-We love Trump!

We love Trump!

-Now, as the country gears up for yet another divisive national elect with the likely Republican nominee facing dozens of federal charges, including ones related to his efforts to overturn the last election... -I am your warrior, I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution, I am your retribution.

-...the challenges for our country, our democracy, and our time have not passed.

In this hour, we'll explore some of what we've learned from our reporting about the divisions we face and we'll ask, what can be done to continue the difficult work of building a more perfect union?

I'm Judy Woodruff, and this is "America at a Crossroads."

The first step in trying to address what was happening was to name it, and that led me to the Pew Research Center... Hello, Carroll.

How are you?

Good to see you again.

How are you doing?

...the non-partisan think has studied public opinion, demographics, and social issues.

There, I met Carroll Doherty and Jocelyn Kiley, who design and analyze polls that Americans take online, attempting to capture how they think and feel about issues and how those feelings change over time.

-The country is more divided, certainly along partisan lines, Th ere have been divisions in the past along other lines, but this is a moment where the divisions are deeper than ever and the intensity of dislike for the other side is probably deeper than ever, as well.

-I think it's fair to say, on virtually you can think about, the gap between Republicans and Democrats is bigger than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

And so when I say that, I mean on, say, immigration, on abortion, and gun policy, on size of government.

There have always been partisan gaps on these issues, but they're all wider than they used to be.

-So, one of the things we also want to look at is the division among the people's representatives here in Washington -- members of Congress, the House, members of the Senate.

What do you see?

I kno -So, the same dynamic is apparent in the public as in Congress.

And, in fact, more pronounced So , if you go back 30 years ago or so, there were a sizable share of Democra who were more conservative than the most liberal Republican and vice versa, a sizable share of Republicans who were more liberal than the most conservative Democrat.

That hasn't been the case for 20 years.

-This is what political scientists refer to as "partisan sorting" -- conservatives moving into the Republican Party, liberals becoming Democrats, and less and less overlap between them, which means that, today, the parties are more d and that leads to another related trend -- the degree to which people from one side not only disagree w but actively dislike the other side.

-And you see that tripling, just about, between 1994 and on the Republican side and a huge spike on the Democratic side, as well.

And so the shares of people, who have this intense dislik for the opposing party has grown so muc over the past 20 o -You can see in this graphic that, for instance, 72% of Republicans say that Democrats are more dishonest than other Americans, and 64% of Democrats say the same about Republicans.

-Carroll, it is striking.

I mean, you look at the numbers.

"Immoral"?

-I know.

-Just in 2016, 35% of Democrats thought Republicans were immoral.

Today, it's 63.

And Republicans, -I t is quite striking.

-And, Jocelyn, from a polling p from a researcher, academic point of -- what's striking about that?

I mean, we're talking less than 30 years this -I think one way to think about this that people have internalized partisan ide maybe in a way that we didn't really see, say, three decades ago.

So it's about issues, it's about and they kind of feed on each other, meaning as you see the oth you're less likely to socialize with them, you're less likely to have them in your friend gro and, therefore, maybe you're a little bit more likely to have negative stereotypes about them.

-Now, it's just like you just have to choose a side and you automatically have to hate t when it shouldn't be that way.

And it wasn't that way.

-That feeling of division, close friends and family members, was apparent in both Republican and Democratic f I sat in on over the summer.

-I'm waiting for someone in Congress to throw a chair at someone, like they do in other countrie -My closest inner circle is mostly like-minded.

They vote Republican or pretty conservative.

But outside of that, I try to avoid conversations because they're just never productive.

No one's changed anyone's mind.

-I mean, it almost feels a -The relative that I have an issue with who I think is Republican is my son.

And the only thing that I can say or say to him is, "How did you get that way?"

-What we heard in those focus groups and from the Pew researchers speaks to the way that politics ha with our personal identities.

So what changed?

How did our politics -W ell, decades ago, we disagreed over things like the role of government or the size of government or what we wanted the government to be doing, and with those types of divisions, we can find a compromise.

-Political scientist to answer that very question.

-What we're seeing today is, the divide i our feelings about each other.

We are angry at one another.

Democrats and Republicans And these types of feelings are not the kind of thing we can c -She sought answers in social psychology, opening "Uncivil Agreement," with the story of Robbers Cave, a famous experiment from the 1950s when researchers brought fifth-grade boys to a summer camp outside Oklahoma City.

The boys, all white, were divided into two teams, one calling itself the Rattlers, the other the Eagles.

Separately, they were allowed to bond.

Then, after a week, the groups were introduced to each other.

-And they immediately wanted to start competi So they wanted t all kinds of different kinds of competitions to prove that they were the b So they started calling ea They accused each other of cheating.

They tried to sabotage each oth The competition got so intense that they had to stop the experiment because they were th and they were becoming violent.

And that experiment was about the sort of innate nature of humans to form groups, to become proud of the groups that we're in, to want our groups to be better than the people that are not and, ultimately, to compete against another if we feel like they are -- they are threatening the status of -That was just one experiment, but a body of research shows we are hard-wired to support our team and to oppose the other one, and, at the same time, our political parties have become more distinct from each other.

# -Chicago became a divi to nominate their presidential -Mason points out that, in 1950, the American Political Science Association issued a report warning that the two major political parties were too sim -It is with pride that I place before this convention for President of the United States the name of Dwight David Eisenhower.

-So much so that in 1952, General Dwight Eisenhower could have run for either party.

-And, ultimately, what they sugg was that the two parties should really stand for some very different po -Congress passes the most sweeping civil-rights bill ever to be written into the law, and thus reaffirms the conception o for all men that began with Lincoln and the Civil Wa 100 years ago.

-In the 1950s and '60s, during another tumultuous period of American history, new court rulings and laws advancing civil rights contributed to a major realignment of the parties.

Many black Americans became Democrats, just as many white Americans opposed to racial integration, like Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, left that party.

On top of that, the 1970s and '80s witnessed the political mobilization of the socially conservative Christian Right, as well as business interests opposed to taxes and regulation, each aligned with Republicans.

Then came the rise of partisan talk radio, cable TV news, the Internet and social media, reflecting and highlighting the differences between parties.

And all this happened as the country itself was diversifying.

In 2013, for the first time, more minority babies were born in this country than non-Hispanic white ones, signaling a shift long under way in the country's -Ultimately, what ended up happening is that our society chan that our parties started becoming different on their own, not based on the policy preferences -- or not only based on policy pref but based on what Democrats and Re what kind of religious services they attended, what kind of cultural television shows they watched, where they lived.

And so they starte from each other in a social way, not just in a sort of policy way.

-Mason argues that this stacking of identities on top of one another into what she calls ha s reinforced our basic instincts for inclusion and exclusion and makes it that much harder for our system to functi -It's not that we've never had partisan animosity.

The difference is that now, because of our sort of progress in terms of civi not just for Black Americans, but for all Americans who including women, is that we have associated the two parties with different sides of that story.

Essentially, the left is now taki "We want a fully egalitarian, pluralistic, multiethnic democracy.

We have never fully had it, but we want to And what Trump has been saying -- right?

-- "Make America great again," is t of going back in time.

And so there is this con "Do we want to move forward or do we want to move backward?"

That means that every time we have an election -- And an election is basically a status competition, There's a winner and a loser.

Rather than it's just being now it feels like our racial group and our religious group and ou is also winning or losing.

So that makes the stakes on a psychological level.

We don't have a place to go That's much more of a tug-of-war, rather than a negotiation.

-Do you believe that it's possible to be very liberal, very progressive, but also be Ch ristian faith?

-No.

-No.

-No.

-No.

-Tell me more.

Go ah -You can't -- You know, I'm and if you're a liberal, then you are pro-choice and then you believe that it's okay to kill a baby.

And I don't believe that you can believe that and be a real Christian.

-God is more of a God of just love.

He's a God of right and wrong.

He's a God of truth.

He's a God of righteousness.

I mean, you can't be liberal and be far left on beliefs and then say, "Oh, I'm a Christian."

Well, you can say it.

That's the worst thing.

People do say it.

-I think that's ridiculous.

I've heard the same thing, but I don't kn I grew up in a very religious household.

I don't practice now, bu if you go into the stories of Jesus' best friends were criminals and prostitutes, and he was about lov not about, you know, judging them.

And I think that gets lost.

-The Pope said it best -- who are we to judge?

So I think if you take that lead, who are we to judge as humans?

-The world is just crazy, and it just seems like the Democrat Party have lost their minds, literally lost their minds.

They do not know right from wrong.

-We are beginning to demonize one another based on different political parties, different political ideologies, a different world vi And that demonization is what leads to the kind of divisions that could lead to, like, violence and really increase co -Back in Washington, at the Lin I met Theodore Johnson, a former U.S. Navy commander whose family history traces the progress this country has made on racial equality over the last century -- from southern sharecroppers to middle-class professionals to his own career in the military, and now his work writing and thinking hard about the posed by the tribalization of our politics.

-So, my solution to this, if there is one, is for us to get to know one another.

When you know the people that are being demon you are resilient to that demonization.

So to the extent that we can get to k live with one another, go to school togethe go to church together, play that sort of thing, I think we can be more resilient to the demonization that's happening.

Unfortunately, I just don't see those walls breaking down in the near term.

-And what about race?

I mean, this is someth We've seen not just the Civil War, the war over slavery, and we've seen the Civil Rights Movement closer to our time, the 1960s, and, yet, we're still fighting those battles.

How much is that a part of what we're dealing with today?

-We've made tremendous progress on the race question, but it is our Achilles' heel.

And the way I see race operating in is that it isn't the central problem, but it is the one thing that points to all of the in our country -- inequality, injustice.

You name something that troubles this country, you can look at racial disparities and find that thing or things plural.

And so when I think about race, I think about closing racial-dis not just because it's the right thing to do, but because you actually address national challenges when you do so.

-These are abandoned homes, and you see this -T o better understand what Johnson was describin I visited one of the many places in this country now openly wrestling with questions of race, equality, and how to move forward.

-And so you have a lot of vacant houses an -In Tulsa, Oklahoma, I took a ride with City Councillor Vanessa Hall-Harper, who represents the 1st District, in the North, where many black Tulsans live today and where historic segregation has led to widely disparate outcome A 2015 Tulsa Health Department report found a greater-than-10-year difference in the life-span of those living in a zip code in the North versus just a in the South.

Today, Hall-Harper fr om poor housing, healthcare, nutrition, an -The community living in North Tulsa is largely African-America and South Tulsa is largely white affluent.

That's a problem.

And that's not only a that's a problem for our city.

-Tulsa Mayor G.T.

Bynum.

-If one part of your city is under-invested in for 75, 80, 100 years, people in that part of the city are gonna have lower life expectancy than other parts of your city.

And so we've tried to but that's a big ship to turn and it's -Bynum, a Republican, is attempting to navigate through a reckoning over race that began more than 100 years ago.

In 1921, during a period of intense th at saw the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, the Greenwood District of Tulsa was a model for black excellence, full of thriving black-owned businesses, professionals, and homes.

But on May 31st, a young black ma working as a shoeshiner was arrested for allegedly assaulting a white woman on an elevator.

A confrontation at the courthouse followed, and on the morning of June 1, 1921, a mob of white men attacked Greenwood, killing hundreds of residents and burning their community to the ground.

And, yet, for many reasons, that story wasn't told until rece In fact, while I was born and spent the early years I never remember hearing anything about Greenwood until news reports began to circulate a few years ago.

-I think the greatest change I've seen in my lifetime, and especially just in the last 5 to 7 years, is the openness with which racial disparities are discussed in our city.

And we've tried to, over the last, I'd say, 20 years, as a community, start having those conversations around that should have been happening for a century, but we've tried to compact all of that and, really, in earnest, in the last decade.

-In 2018, Mayor Bynum announced an effort to find out more about the massacre, using ground-penetrating radar, coring, and excavation to explore four sites where victims may have been buried.

-We want to be a city where when horrible things happen to people, we, as a city, rally around them to find out what happened and be there for their families At the same time, there's a human challenge.

There's a great lack of trust towards because the city didn't do enough for so long.

-Following the massacre, many Greenwood buildings and businesses were rebuilt.

But in the decades that followed, developers built a highway through which, combined with housing discrimination in the form of race-restrictive covenants and redlining, drove many residents north.

Now Councillor Hall-Harper is engaging residents over what more the city should do to address both historic wrongs and present-day inequality, including the question of reparations.

-You know, I grew up -- when I had to apologize, I had to do more than just say, "I'm I had to do all that I can -- could do to make right what I had done.

-So, when you speak wh at do you mean exactly by that?

-I think we are in the process right of having those conversations, but if you're asking me, Vanessa Hall-Harper, reparations to me is land and -To whom?

-To everyone that was involved, to not only the victims, but to their descendants But not only were individuals destroyed, community was destroyed.

This entire space, this entir And so what does that form of reparations look like?

I think those are conversations that we must have.

-Mayor G.T.

Bynum.

-Everyone I talk to in town would agree that we need to do right by Tulsans who were murdered in 1921.

That's why we are doing this search for the graves.

We've allocated over $1 million in city funds that has been unanimously supported by the city council and overwhelmingly supported by the public.

The public has overwhelmingly supported our work aro One could view all of that work as reparations.

There are others who say, "You've got to lev on everyone who lives in Tulsa and issu That, to me, is a much more challenging question, because you're financially penalizing everyone who li for something that criminals did 100 years ago.

But we're going through a dialogue, and the way I think you address it i to keep the dialogue going.

-But in the past two years, Okla lawmakers have arguably made that harder.

-More fallout from the signing of House Bill 1775 in Oklahoma.

-In 2021, Governor Kevin Stitt signed SB 1775, legislation restricting how history can be taught in public schools.

-And, as governor, th at not one cent of taxpayer money should be used to define and divide young Oklahomans about their race or sex.

-On its face, SB 1775 was about preventi on the basis of race or sex, but it included a provision that said no individual should feel di guilt, anguish, or any form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex, which some worry is so broad and subjective that it's having a chilling effect on the teaching of difficult subjects, like the 1921 massacre.

-Well, Critical Race Theory -- or if you want to look diversity, equity, inclusion, we don't -- Equity is making everyone equal.

That's not the case, right?

We can't all be have the s That is Marxism, literally.

We want equitable, not equity, where everyone has the same opportunity.

-Tulsa-area parent Janice Danforth supports the law, 1775.

She founded the local chapter of Moms for Liberty, a national conservative parents-rights group opposed to diversity, equity, and inclusion that's also moved to ban books across the country.

I asked Danforth how teachers are supposed to manage how a student feels about a historical event, like the 1921 massacre, without jeopardizing their job or the How do you carefully make that separation, though?

-I think you can show that there were some people in that time frame that were not good people.

The Ku Klux Klan was a terrible organization that did terrible things to Black people.

And I think kids can learn about it without having to have that concept put on them like it's their fault.

-And you think teachers should be able to make that distinction?

-Absolutely.

I think if you're worrie then you're probably teaching it wrong.

-I think it's ridiculous.

I think it's totally ridic of what actually happened just for fear of making someone feel gui Teach them also in order for this not to happen.

"These are the things that we must do."

-We've got some serious issues that we need to tackle, and if we don't get it sort of under control, it could spiral out of control.

We reach another point in where an existential threa that Americans don't get along with one another.

And I think a lot of that stems from the fac that we just don't know We don't live around peopl We don't have -- In our social circles, we don't have people that are d So we're living in differe And if those different Americas clash, instead of learn how to deliberate, to work in a democracy together, then we can -- some serious problems mig -One institution that has historically played a key role in uniting people at the local level, emphasizing what they have in common, is the community newspaper.

In the small city of Canadian, Texa in an area that voted overwhelmingly for President Trump, I found a people mournin The Canadian Record.

-It's just got a -- kind of a hole in it, -I just don't know who's going to be sharing all of the champions and the good news in our community.

-It's almost like a death in the family.

We don't talk We just go, "Oh, I c -For decades, inThe Record'spages, editor and publisher Laurie Brown documented the city council, school and hospital board meetings, the impacts of droughts and wildfires, the babies born, football games won, and residents lost.

She called for the construct and for the installation of a blinking stop sign at a three-way highway intersection that had seen too many fatal accidents.

-I tell people we sometimes helped good things happen, and we often stopped bad things from happening.

And it's not because we're so powerful.

It's because information is powerful.

And we're making sure the community, the people who care about these things, know about t We had probably 5 or 6 pages of classifieds.

-Classifieds.

-They're pretty mu -Yet, after so many years of holding the paper together, as classified-ad purchases dwindled and reporters left and weren't replaced, earlier this year, Brown made the difficult decision to suspend publicati -We were already working on sort of a shoestring, and I just didn't see how I could do it.

I needed a break.

And it was the hardest dec -What's happened toThe Record here in Canadian is not unique.

Across the country, over the past two decades, more than 2,200 weekly newspapers have closed down, and tens of thousands of reporters have been laid off.

And researchers say that not only has profound effects on the practice of journalism, but also on the country's civic heal -Local news is something that sort of reminds people of what they have in common, both their challenges and their shared culture, their shared community.

-Johanna Dunaway is a professor and research director at Syracuse University's Institute for Democracy, Jo She says the broad decline of local newspapers nationally, driven largely by plummeting revenue, as advertising moved online, has contributed to the rising polarization now seen across the country.

-I mean, national news, for all of i it tends to frame politics in America through the lens of the major conflicts between the two parties, right?

And for those Americans wh o are only watching the national news, they often only get this sort of game-frame-style cove that it's almost like sports reporting with Democrats on one side and Republicans on the other.

-Facing a growing showdown with Re over America's ability to pay off its debt, President Biden speaking to union members in Maryland.

-McCarthy is putting the blame on President Biden here.

-Desperate Joe Biden dusting off his MAGA boogeyman talking points.

-We're both old enough to remem when Republicans were for "defund the police."

-One of the things local news does "Oh, that person -- they may be of the other party, but they're facing the same challenge that I'm facing.

-So if we have to do a surgery, we do it in there.

-Steve Rader is a third-generation rancher who lives 18 miles outside of Canadian, in the adjoining county.

Hi, there.

-There's -For him,The Recordwas a lifeline to the community and to his past, and its loss has been especially hard.

-Our paper spoiled us.

It was so colorful and beautiful, and they celebrated our ou r tough times.

-It feels personal.

-Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that paper was a part of our life.

People from hundreds of miles away came and supported our community and... -In 2017, a wildfire burned more than 300,000 acres, including 12 sections of grass on Rader's ranch, four trailers, equipment, and 85 cattle.

-But if the paper hadn't told about it, nobody would have known.

And people responded People we didn't even know from all over the country sent us hay and feed.

And a lady from New Mexico sent us 10 cows to replace the ones that had died.

And the paper, not that we were whining or but it brought it to the forefront and documented what ha -Laurie, the editor, would put her own op as editor in the paper.

Did you always agree with what sh -No.

No.

But she always made me think.

I hate to say it, Judy, but her family opposed the and they received a lot of flak over that.

And, looking back, I think they were totally right.

We need to have other opinions.

That's our strength of America.

Thank God for that.

-Johanna Dunaway of Syracuse University says that in addition to the loss of shared identity, when a local news source closes, there are a number of other potential impact including more corruption and irresponsible spending, more straight-ticket voting, less competitive elections, and lower tu -And then it's just more of a cycle, right?

The legislators or city-council people or mayoral-office folks realize th and so then why would they cater to those -- the people who aren't going to turn out So then they're only turning out -- They're only sort of beha with the preferences of the people who do vote.

And those are the citizens who tend to have ve and tend to have the most extreme policy preferences.

And so then you get more polarizing behavior on the part of both the voters and those holding office.

-Do you think that our country can stay strong, that our democracy can stay strong well into the future with, frankly, you know, hollowed-out local journalism?

-I worry that it can't, because I worry that we are more susceptible to this kind of tribal attitude and behavior that sometimes political elites, at the national level on both sides, they try to use that to sort of -- for their own strategic advantage for elections or for what ha It's usually short term.

And they are not doing it wi They are doing it so they can stay i and make good policy.

But when the news is only sort be ing made by both sides at the national level, I think it makes the problem worse.

-I'm curious -- where are you getting your information?

Like, where are yo What are you reading?

What are you lis -I watch BlazeTV and Fox N and I'm all over Twitter.

-Clay Travis and Buck Sext They are good.

I mean, these guys They know things.

Sean Hannity -H ow many of you believe Joe Biden was legitima elected President of the United St How many of you believe that the election was stolen or rigged in some way?

Okay, everybody.

What about January 6th?

How do people feel about January 6th?

-Setup.

-T ell me why.

-100% setup.

-What do you guys make of Trum both being indicted all of these times and still being the frontrunner for the Republican nomination?

-I read something about, like, you can never question how Jim Jones got people to drink the Kool-Aid anymore because -- I don't know -- you hear people talk about him and all of his policies don't help the peo who are his biggest followers, so it confuses me the most.

-If you broke a law, you need to answer for what you have done.

So whether you're an ex-president, a current president, whoever you ar you need to answer for what you did, the wrongdoings.

-It's not the fact that Donald Trump broke the law.

It's all about breaking Donald Trump.

-Yes.

-That's what it is.

-Yep.

-As we head into another it is clear that we as a country face a great many challenges.

Here at the Lincoln Cottage in Washington, where the 16th president spent time during the Civil War and where he conceived of the Emancipation Proclamation, I recently gathered a group of highly respected thinkers to discuss their concerns at this moment.

They were former Federal Appellate Judge Michael Luttig, a conservative stalwart, Vanderbilt political historian Nicole who has studied and written about the conservative movement, and former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, who now teaches leadership at Harvard.

Welcome to all three of you.

And I want to begin with you, Judg and just this basic question we've been reporting on America's divisions.

Given that, how concerned are you right now about this country?

-Well, Judy, I' about our country today, certainly more concerned than I've ever been in my lifetime.

All of a sudden, it seems that we Americans don't agree on anything at all.

We certainly don't agree any longer on the principles and the values on which this country was founded.

We don't even any longer agree on America's democracy and whether democracy is the greatest form of government in the world and, indeed, in all of civilization.

-I share that sense of concern.

You know, there have been many times throughout U that Americans have clashed over basic values, over the meaning of democracy.

Abraham Lincoln himself said, you know, "We all use the word 'democracy,' but in using the same word, we don't all mean the same thing But I think it's this idea that needs to be abandoned that gives me the most pause, because it's the sense that maybe none of this is worth preserving, maybe none of this is worth defending that it seems, sometimes a growing number of people in the country, and, more importantly, that there is a political party that seems at least curious about where that idea might take them.

And that, that skepticism about democracy attached to a vehicle of institutional power, that's something we should be really concerned about, especially given the outbreaks of political that we've seen in recent years.

-And, Governor Patrick, what as someone who served in elective office for a number of years, You've been in -You know, it's -- I share the concerns and the gravity of concerns that my friends here have described.

It's amazing how it feels it has declined so rapidly since I left office in early 2015, because, at that time, it seemed to me there was still an appetite th at said you didn't have to agree on everything before you worked together on anything at all.

I still think that appetite exists in regu I think that our politics have become so performative now, radical for attention's sake.

And the danger, of course, is that that leadership is internalized by lots of people.

And you mentioned the issue of political violence.

The language is careless.

And the actions that are taken, including up to January 6th, are pretty scary.

But I will say this.

I think we have two interr One is how to make it function, right?

How to make the rules and the sy so that you can get registered, stay registered, vote, have that vote c The hyper-partisan gerrymandering, the amount of money in our politi All of these have solutions.

There are good ideas out there.

Lots of people working on them.

They are important.

But there's another challenge.

It's not the same.

And I think this is the one I feel like we That is how to make ou Meaning, how is it that folks feel like that democracy delivers for them.

-You know, Judy, the governor is, of course, correct.

Our politics today is poisonous, and it's eating away at the fabric of our society today for a number of reasons.

I attribute this in no small part to our political le and to our political public officials, because it's in their best political interest, if you will, to portray Americans as enemies of each o And there's far more that we share and agree upon as Americans even today than there is that we disagree over.

-Nicole, when I hear Judge Luttig refer to political leaders who want there to be dissension among the publ I mean, that's something that has -- maybe there's been a strain of that throughout our political hist but that's truly come to the f And you've looked at this, haven't you?

-I have.

And it's one of those thi that I think sometimes gets confused when we talk about polarization.

We talk about polarization as though it the political landscape that we're in.

But polarization is actually a tool of po It's something that political leaders can use to both tear down an d to drive their base closer to them.

It's something that we saw in the politics of the 1990s.

Newt Gingrich, as Speaker of the House, saw polarization as a powerful weapon.

He circulated rhetoric that talked about Democrats as disgusting and evil as a way of having voters recoil against this group, seeing them as enemies rather than opponents.

And, Judge Luttig, when you and I spoke a few you talked about how as long as there is still a body of belief out there among our elected officials that the 2020 election was not legitimate, that it was stolen, that our democracy isn't safe.

-No question, Judy.

In my congressional testimony, I incl to the Civil War in this country.

I believed at that time -- and this was a year and a half ago -- that we were on perhaps on the cusp of a literal civil war.

I would say that we are that much closer to a literal civil war today than we were a year and a half ago.

-I find that one of the most perplexing p is that the so-called grievances of rural people, white working people around economic insecurity, social isolation, despair, as measured by things like suicide rates or addiction rates are exactly the same hurt that black and brown people in cities have been feeling for generations.

And the notion that our leaders don't as an opportunity to unite around common hurt and address common solutions is mind-boggling to me.

And frustrating, more to the point.

-And why do we think that is?

I mean, why -- As we' we have heard from Americans who feel -- for example, in Steubenville, Ohio, Nicole -- that they've been forgotten, that they've just -- They're not thought about by the power centers in this country, whether it's politicians or t and they feel disrespected.

I mean, are those feelings legitimate?

-Well, yes and no.

A lot of people are getting about the economy that don't actually match up to reality, and that causes people to feel that the country is going in the wrong can make them feel like the economy is doing worse than it is, that politicians are more corrupt than evidence supports.

And, yet, there really is a problem with people's material needs being met.

We are in an era of immense inequali And while there have been some moments in recent years that that has been eased, there haven' structural reforms that address that.

-I think this point about people feeling unheard is s You know, if you are -- If you don't live in a so-called battleground state, you could think the presidential elect has nothing to do with you at all.

If you are a Democrat in a so-called red s I hate these terms -- or a Republican or a so-call nobody talks to you, nobody thinks about you.

And the notion that political operatives and wise guys and gals think somehow that isn't absorbed by the people who are being ignored, that that isn't felt by the people w that we can, you know, count votes without asking for them is a huge pr -Nicole, I want to touch on something that you referred to a minute ago, and that's the role of the media, the news media in this country, which when I started was pretty much -- We were supposed to be reporting for everybody.

We were reporting, and it was To day, the media is much more -- some o How is that affecting and playing a role?

-Oh, it has an enormous role to play.

The speed at which these partisan media mov now make it very easy both to spread misinformation, spread conspiracy theories, but also the type of media system we have now really flourishes on negative em -Mm-hmm.

-And you get more vi you get more engagement if you can make people angry An d so that has been the register that our politics have been in.

-We're about to enter another contentious presidential election year.

Governor Patrick, what gives you hope at a time like this?

-Well, first of all, it is deeply concerning to all of us that we are as divided as we are.

It is also concerning that it is as easy to divide us as it is.

And I think it's easy to divide us because we don't know each I think that we get a one-dimensional look at a whole a lot of people, and we fill in all the blanks.

And I think I may be sensitive to this in particular as a black man, because I know what that's l So it's one of the reasons why, as an aside, I think the time is right for service, for national service, domestic or foreign, military, civilian.

We need ways to be together serving an unmet civic need and, through that, coming to know each other better.

Now, as a related point, in a functioning democracy, we get the government we deserve.

And if we want better government, more of us are going to have to stop feel for all the reasons we do and acknowledge and overwhelm the barriers that are that are placed in front of us.

We have to register and show up.

We have to get everybody we know to registe And there have to be political consequences, it seems to me, for those seeking or in office who bring nothing but sensationalized division.

-Nicole, what about you?

What do you see that gives you that something positive could be out there?

-One of the kind of perverse effects of having a right or a value under attack is that it makes people think about it more and value it more.

When democracy is under attack, it calls people to think more about why democracy is valuable, why it's worth preserving.

And I think that's one of the thing that we've seen in the is people waking up to the threats to our basic form of government.

And what are they doing?

They're going out They're marching in the streets.

An d so it has infused citizenship with a sense of meaning and a determination to not make it just passive citizenship, that, yes, turning up and voting every year or two years or four years -- that is absolutely important.

It is the backbone of democracy, but that there is something more that our citizenship asks of -We are heading into this contentious presidential election year, Judge.

What's giving you hope?

-I would be less than honest with you, Judy, and my friends here today if I didn't say that it's hard to find hope on the horizon at the moment.

But I do.

And I find that hope in the American people.

Under our Constitution, all of the power resides with we, the p We Americans control our own destiny.

And when we decide to control that destiny, then we will do so.

And I believe that time is coming soon.

And I'm hopeful and eternally optimistic, based upon the character of the American people.

-As we've traveled across the country this year, Americans have made clear how real our divisions are.

Nevertheless, our democracy has held because we're able to work through our disagreements and because we have shared values.

But too often these days, we reject those whom we perc We seek comfort in what's familiar, and attempt to win for our side at all costs.

If we splinter over our values, if Americans determine they're no longer on the same side over basics like freedom, equality, and respecting the rights of others, it will raise questions about whether our demo Next year, another high-stakes election looms, and we'll continue to report on how the American people are responding to this moment.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Judy Woodruff at the Lincoln Cottage in Washington, D.C. # # # # -Funding for "America at a Crossroads with Judy Woodruff" provided by the following and viewers like you.

Thank you.

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