As we approach the 242nd anniversary of the Declaration of Independence this week, millions of American partisans seem to be only half-heartedly celebrating their liberation from Britain, pining instead for liberation from other Americans. Articles about dividing the United States into two or more parts (or at least recognizing the forces pushing in that direction) were circulating in the years preceding the rise of Donald Trump, of course, and every border state in the union has long had its own faction of separatists. But not until 2017 and 2018 did secessionism become a staple of U.S. debate, on both the right and the left. It is time, author Kevin Baker declared, only half-kidding, in The New Republic in early 2017, for an amicable divorce, a “Virtual Secession,” or “Bluexit,” to be realized in the form of extreme federalism. “Since those of you in the Trump States will not listen to us, or to anything that smacks of rationality,” Baker explained, “we will have to create new facts on the ground.” Jesse Kelly of the Federalist, meanwhile, has obsessed over the red-blue war and the penned alternative two-country maps. “The G.O.P. has many problems,” he recently wrote, “but the Democratic Party has turned into something completely un-American.” (Kelly recently gained some notoriety with an indecent riff about scalping liberals on the battlefield of a not-so-distant civil war.)

The curious aspect of this divide is that Americans of strongly opposed ideologies but mild partisan sympathies often seem more willing to share a country than do Americans of mildly opposed ideologies but strong partisan sympathies. (I borrow this terminology from Reihan Salam, who perceptively noted in The Atlantic that rising Democratic star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez departs from the “fixations of Democrats who are more partisan than ideological.”) One of the best friends of Bernie-supporting congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is Benghazi-pursuing Republican Trey Gowdy. Gabbard got grief from the Democrats for meeting with Donald Trump after his election and Gowdy from Republicans for defending the F.B.I. against Trump’s complaints of spying. Fox’s Tucker Carlson has become cordial with the Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald, and agreement on certain matters of foreign policy is only part of it. Carlson is a conservative who (in contrast to Fox tradition) exhibits no love for Republicans and Greenwald is a liberal who exhibits no love for Democrats. They’re more ideological than partisan.

Most of us have read enough about our divides to be familiar with the studies of partisanship and how our loyalties skew our perceptions. We know, from psychological papers, that as sports fans we’re likely to overlook the faults of our own team and perceive and exaggerate every fault of the other side. And yet few of us seem to make an effort to factor it into our thinking. Back when the rivalry between the Bloods and the Crips of South Los Angeles fascinated the world, journalists would occasionally ask members of each side (which also had countless internal factions) why they hated the other one. No one ever seemed to offer a coherent answer. It wasn’t a battle of ideas, of lifestyle, of resources, or even of blood. Turf wars and drugs entered into it, but the battle was primarily one of arbitrary identity and nothing more. They hated one another because they hated one another.

To be sure, blue Americans could easily answer why they dislike red Americans, or at least their policies, and vice versa, but the level of difference is regularly exaggerated. For someone who looks at the details of stories or policies, one of the most frustrating aspects of the cold civil war between Americans is how much of it is based simply on distortions of the other side’s thinking. Correcting the record doesn’t help, however, because the animosity doesn’t spring from the distortions. On the contrary: the distortions spring from the animosity. Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams—now deep into Trump apologia-land but nevertheless a voice of important insights in 2016—liked to stress that red and blue Americans (or at least Trump lovers and Trump haters) were seeing two completely different movies of the same world. One side saw a crude but masterful candidate who would be an unusual but possibly great president while the other saw a vicious demagogue who would usher in fascism and violence toward minorities. Strong movies impose their own demands, chiefly for facts that reinforce the story line. If those facts aren’t available, we make them up, or warp them into unrecognizable form. The press does this constantly.