David Brooks, columnist for The New York Times, recently wrote an article capturing our current political dysfunction. A diverse society like ours, he said, operates through either dictatorship or politics. “Our founding fathers chose politics.”

In our current political process, however, we gravitate toward a dictatorial approach. We are unwilling to settle for merely a piece of the pie. We want the whole thing. Either our side wins or we will bring down the country. Our opponents are not merely people with whom we disagree. They are traitors.

“The antipolitics people elect legislators who have no political skills or experience,” Brooks writes. “That incompetence leads to dysfunctional government, which leads to more disgust with government, which leads to a demand for even more outsiders.”

In a dictatorship, one group gets everything it wants. In politics, no group gets everything it wants. For whatever reason, too many of us today seem unable to live with this fact of democratic existence.