We live in a viciously divided country. Sometimes it’s hard, if not impossible, to engage in a rational discussion with someone who disagrees with us on key issues of human rights and the course of our nation. That is, if we attempt it at all. What will it take for us to regain the courage to talk with one another about important issues facing our democracy? In “Rebuilding America,” we tapped into the lives of people around the country in search of answers to how we can bridge our differences. All with the goal of improving our democracy.
At his grandmother’s funeral in early 2021, a pair of Jeffrey Fuss’s cousins approached his twin brother with an unexpected question: “Do you blame us for what happened?”
The question caught him off guard. It wasn’t about his grandmother — it was about politics. Fuss’s brother had become an unlikely center of attention because he was a U.S. Capitol police officer during the January 6 attack just two months before.
He tried to keep the mood light on the sensitive subject. “Why would I blame you for January 6?” he said.
“We voted for Trump,” the cousins said.
Fuss, a 33-year-old high school civics teacher living in Angier, North Carolina, recalls having to walk away from the conversation. He said emotions at that time were raw all around, and he thought they were at least partially responsible for tolerating the president’s behavior that put a loved one in danger.
Today, he hardly talks to that family anymore, partly because of the distance between him and them in West Virginia, but politics certainly created a rift that he couldn’t avoid — even at a funeral, he said.
Fuss isn’t alone in feeling that rift. Americans across the country agree that political polarization is worse than ever. A 2025 poll by the New York Times and Siena University found that polarization was voters’ most urgent issue after the economy. That’s above immigration, inflation, and crime, which have dominated the political conversation in years past.
Nobody is happy about this polarization, either. A 2023 report from the Pew Research Center put Americans’ confidence in their political system at historic lows, and said that majorities feel exhausted and angry when thinking about politics. When asked what word best describes politics in the U.S., respondents most frequently used “divisive” and “corrupt.”
As the division grows wider, many feel like they can’t talk about politics with families and friends with whom they disagree.
“It’s kind of like a land mine,” Fuss said. “One misstep will ‘boom’ and cause a really bad reaction.”
Philip Dai, a 19-year-old student at Johns Hopkins University from Wake Forest, North Carolina, has felt that need to tiptoe around politics his whole life. He said his parents, both Donald Trump voters, have brushed off his political disagreements with them in the past with statements like, “You’ll get it when you’re older.”
Yet Dai has also felt pressure to avoid politics in the other direction. He said many people he’s met at college, some more left-wing than himself, aren’t open to listening to other perspectives. Add that to the way he sees young people quarrel on social media, and he’s become somewhat scared to discuss mainstream politics with friends.
And the kicker: Dai studies international relations and political science. He said it’s no secret that he’s politically minded, but he still feels hesitant to discuss those politics.
“There’s definitely a lot of implicit fear of talking about politics now because you never know what the other person is going to think of your beliefs,” Dai said.
Virginia Perez, a 26-year-old church worker living in Arcadia, California, said that having a one-sided view of politics hurt her own personal relationships in the past.
“I just didn’t like a certain president, I voted against him, I would go to marches, and I had so much anger and hatred that I was the one who would push back and separate myself from family and individuals that love me,” Perez said.
Ever since joining the church and embarking on her own spiritual journey, she said, she’s found ways to reconnect with people and not view them in partisan ways.
“I believe that sometimes we may be stuck in our ways, that we want to just avoid conversations,” Perez said. “But once you stop speaking to people or conversing with people, that’s where division comes and that’s where hatred comes.”
Across the spectrum and across the country, that division in today’s politics is driving families and friends further apart.
How did we get here?
Something Fuss noticed in his experience teaching high school students is how easy social media and technology make it for people to “siphon themselves off” from the outside world.
It’s not just students. He said that even a colleague will pull out their phone mid-conversation with him and not be fully present. Within digital spaces, he said people feel empowered to act more hostile and toxic than they would in real life.
For example, an angry parent once accused Fuss of political indoctrination via an anonymous email. His offense: showing a slide about communism during a presentation on the political spectrum.
“It didn’t go anywhere, but it was very real in that this can happen at any point, at any time, to any of us in this building, if we just say one thing that does not align with how they identify with politics,” he said.
Fuss said that if the parent had to speak with him in person, the situation would have gone better. But because digital communication is convenient and detached, people are enabled to say things they otherwise might not in a face-to-face conversation.
With people spending an increasing amount of their time online, that hostility is becoming the default way they express and perceive politics. A 2021 report from Pew said politics was the most cited reason for online abuse given by those who experienced it.
“I think we can all blame the media and social media as the reason why politics have gotten so bad,” Dai said. “ But I think the core of it, too, is just that people aren’t talking to as many people as people used to talk to.”
On his college campus, Dai noticed his peers didn’t do much to branch out from their already established social groups. When the internet supplies them with all the information they need, he said, there’s never a reason to strike up a conversation with someone they don’t know.
In essence, Americans aren’t getting the random face-to-face interaction that used to be more common, and which would naturally expose people to other perspectives. And through a process called partisan sorting, most Americans today live in areas with very few neighbors from the other political party.
For Fuss, it goes beyond people shutting themselves off from others via technology. Even if someone wanted to have a natural interaction with someone politically different, where would they find them?
“When I talk to my students who are from Mexico, they’re like, ‘Mr. Fuss, the roads here suck, because no one is ever out,’” Fuss said. “You have to drive far to go hang out, and then you have to pay to go someplace, like a restaurant.”
And when Americans’ built environments are designed in ways that isolate people from each other, how can we expect them to naturally meet anyone outside their own bubble?
What do we do now?
Voters are saying that their country’s political culture isn’t working for them. But at the same time, they feel it’s an uphill battle to rebuild the connections they’ve lost to that political culture.
How, then, do we start talking to each other?
For someone like Perez, the answer might lie in having an intrinsic motivation to do so. After joining the church, she met people with all kinds of beliefs through missions and community service. She said that seeking faith and a religious community helped her rebuild her own relationships lost to politics.
But Perez also recognized that not everyone feels the same way towards religion. Still, she said that the mission is not to shy away from people who differ in opinion or worldview, and to show them compassion.
“We have to take action,” she said. “We have to go to the places that make us feel uncomfortable and have these scary and uncomfortable conversations.”
That mission is what inspired Braver Angels, an organization that facilitates political conversations between people on all sides of the partisan divide.
Michael Siegel, a 79-year-old retiree, joined Braver Angels because he was tired of his bubble in deep-blue Los Angeles, California. Today, he’s an ambassador who helps with outreach for his local alliance in the organization.
“What I have learned is that I need to ask more questions than share my opinions,” Siegel said. “We’re not here to change your beliefs on the issues or perspectives on the issues. We’re here to change your perspective of who I am, of each other.”
Siegel recalled one workshop in which he paired up with someone conservative to share their sources of news information with one another.
“It’s like you’re living in a different world,” he said.
But it helped him learn a lot about where other conservative people in his life are coming from. Siegel said that Braver Angels is one way for motivated people to find and talk face-to-face with those on the other side of politics.
That’s the thing, though. People who are motivated to have political dialogues will find a great resource in Braver Angels. What about everyone else, who don’t have the time or will?
Phil Bailey, a 73-year-old retiree and volunteer from Hancock, Maine, said it will take people reaching out to friends and family members in their lives, sometimes multiple times, to repair those relationships.
Bailey helps run Building Bridges Maine, which is also affiliated with Braver Angels. He said that a lot of people who attend their events are invited by someone else they know.
He’s also found that people from across the political spectrum will come together to help their community’s needs. In those cases, like with blood drives he’s given to and community meal initiatives he’s volunteered for, it’s not about politics at all.
And even in a time where it feels like people are isolated from each other, Bailey sometimes finds the random interactions that Dai and Fuss lament the loss of.
“I have a neighbor down the road, and on the back of his car he has a bumper sticker that’s rifles and machine guns,” Bailey said. “It says, ‘This is my family. What’s yours?’”
Bailey rides his bike past that car almost every day. Once in a while, when that neighbor is outside, they’ll stop and have a conversation.
“Clearly, we’re on different sides of things,” Bailey said. “But about six months ago, he said, ‘You know, Phil, you’re about the only liberal I can actually talk with.’”
It’s even possible that Bailey is the only liberal person that talks with that neighbor at all—and by being open to a conversation in the first place, he fostered a connection that made both of them understand each other a bit better.
And the way I see it, if Bailey can do it, so can anyone else.