America's Divisions: Getting on Our Nerves (with Jessica Tarlov)

“Divided, angry, sad, broke.” Those are the four words Sarah Longwell wrote down while watching her own focus groups. The sadness, she says, was the biggest one. People are not just frustrated about prices or politics — they are grieving lost relationships with parents, siblings, and friends. In this conversation with Jessica Tarlov, co-host of The Five and author of the forthcoming I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends, the two dig into what is actually driving that grief and what people can do about it.

The psychology of political estrangement

Tarlov and Longwell agree that the damage is real and runs deep. Focus group participants on both sides describe family members who no longer speak to them, weddings they were not invited to, and funerals they skipped. The mechanism, as Tarlov describes it, is that people feel powerless about national politics — they cannot punish the politicians who upset them — so they punish the people closest to them instead. Cutting off a relative becomes the one action that feels meaningful.