Slavery was abolished unilaterally, not as a reversal of the political polarization, and it could be argued that although the explicit practice of slavery is no longer polarizing, Jim Crow laws and their modern antecedents such as The Southern Strategy have been continually polarizing in American politics ever since.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

Shia-Sunni, Turkey-Greek, Catholic-Reformation are a few that come to mind. Take a look at Middle East and you would see long standing polarization.. Anti-semitism is also another long standing polarization.

Slavery was abolished, but you still have people flying confederate flags and arguing for slavery (in a more modern rendition)

I think as long as the big factors that influence the polarization stays, i.e, big tech, social media, etc, the polarization will stay here.

Slavery took a civil war with 500,000 dead to end the polarization. Yeah, it ended, and that's good, but... is there a way where we can end that kind of polarization without 500,000 dead?

Dissolve the constitution and call for a new constitutional convention?

Sure. The civil war that would inevitably result from that almost certainly wouldn't result in 500,000 dead due to modern medicine. All of the people who died in the first civil war from things that we consider simple to treat now (like infections) would survive.

But I have a feeling that's not what you meant.

Maybe. Maybe. Or maybe that triggers the civil war.

Look, it's possible. It could even be what we need. But for it to work, we'd need wisdom and honest compromise, not sound-bite driven trench-warfare politics. Under current conditions, I see a low probability that it would work.

Or perhaps mandatory civil service?

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/10/31/us-democracy-mandatory-...

In a country where a sizable minority feel that simply wearing masks during a pandemic is an unconscionable infringement of personal liberty?

That same country still has a mandatory selective service for the military.

No it doesn't. It has a purely voluntary military. (People still have to register for selective service, but there hasn't been a draft in decades.)

They used Chekoslovakia as an example, as well as climate change.

Understanding logical fallacy has been shown to act as an “inoculant” against fake news.

I don’t think these things reverse (time doesn’t go backwards) so much as settle as the last generation that held such beliefs dies off.

>80% followed religion in the US in ‘99. Now it’s <50%. Coincidentally about the same percent of support for conservative politics (not economics but the ephemeral civic life tradition or death type).

It’s how it goes; humans were the hard drives and CPUs of our economics until recently, and the costly in real terms old money network winds down with them. A lot of folks will feel disenfranchised, many rightly so, but also of lot rich folks today made it rich in an era of imploding pensions and gambling away others retirements, so if they get hosed, oh well.

In the end all will be forgotten and implicitly I think we know that so we just keep going.