Understanding Trump’s base and America’s increasingly bitter partisan divides

Events leading up to the January 6 storming of the Capitol and thereafter prompted me to write this essay to help Americans better understand one another across our increasingly vitriolic partisan divides. It draws on my original ethnographic field research among social conservative groups fueling America’s “culture wars” and the New Right, and the misunderstandings and blindnesses that work revealed, as well as my ongoing observations from my work as a sociologist and documentary filmmaker. I am still looking to get it published.