Americans crave unity; but will that be enough?

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — She flipped through television channels and radio stations, scanning from conservative to liberal media, searching for any sign that the polarized nation had finally reached its tipping point.

For days, Elisa Karem Parker had been seeing updates in the news: A pipe bomb sent to liberal political donor George Soros. One delivered to CNN. More to former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other prominent political figures villainized by those on the right — a bizarre plot unfolding just ahead of the midterm election that will decide which party controls Congress.

“It’s like our country is becoming ‘The Hunger Games,’” Parker, who considers herself squarely in the middle of the political divide, told her husband and teenage son over dinner.

As authorities intercepted more than a dozen pipe bombs addressed to President Donald Trump’s most ardent critics, political scientists and ordinary Americans observed, again, that rabid partisanship had devolved to the point of acts of violent extremism. Many wonder whether this latest spasm might be the moment that the nation collectively considers how poisonous the political culture has become and decides to turn the other way.

“If this isn’t it, I’d hate to think about what it will take,” Parker said as she cast her ballot in early voting last week in Louisville, Kentucky.