The Polarization Of Hurricane Florence

With Hurricane Florence bearing down on the Eastern seaboard, it's as good a time as any to take stock of the wondrous, warping powers of partisanship, which now touches and transforms absolutely everything in our public life. Even the weather. Listen for it as the storm approaches, strikes, and then dissipates — the ways that competing ideologies (an increasingly tribal conservatism on the right; statist progressivism on the left) shape differing reactions to the event and expose the deepening political and cultural fissures in our profoundly divided country. For a Republican, a hurricane is an act of God.