America's divides are proliferating and deepening by the day. The key political and economic divides predate the pandemic, but the pandemic is acting as a catalyst, creating new divides and exacerbating existing ones.

Let's start with the politicization and subsequent polarization of re-opening the economy. In a reasonably sane, coherent society, this issue would be subject to common sense debates about risks, trade-offs, policies, responses to new data, etc.

But American society is neither sane nor coherent, so what should be a non-partisan debate was immediately politicized, to the absurd extreme that "progressives" must favor continuing strict lockdowns lest they be accused of being "conservative."

The erosion of middle ground and the disappearance of de-politicized policy debates is a clear sign that a society is doomed to disintegration not just of the social order but the political and economic orders.

Author Peter Turchin has described the disintegrative stage in his book Ages of Discord, in which he modeled a Political Stress Index comprised in part of these three dynamics:

1. Stagnating real wages due to oversupply of labor.

2. Overproduction of parasitic elites.

3. Deterioration of central state finances.