Sometimes when I have nothing better to do, I think back on the elections we had in the before times — when, say, Mitt Romney ran against Barack Obama or John Kerry ran against George W. Bush. I try to figure out why politics and society in general felt so different then.

It’s not because we didn’t have big disagreements back then. The Iraq War kicked up some pretty vehement arguments. It’s not because we weren’t polarized. Pundits have been writing about political polarization since at least 2000 and maybe well before.

Politics is different now because something awful has been unleashed. William A. Galston defines this awful thing in his fantastic new book, “Anger, Fear, Domination: Dark Passions and the Power of Political Speech.” Even before the Charlie Kirk assassination it was obvio

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