Ah, well as someone who is old enough to remember, let me summarize. (puts on bifocals and cardigan)
Yes, a vast divide has opened up in American politics. There is a common narrative loudly asserted by certain people that this polarization is due to “Both Sides” becoming vastly more partisan - right-wingers becoming more right-wing matched by an equal and opposite reaction of left-wingers become more left-wing.
This narrative is wrong. What actually happened is that the left became a teeny bit more left- wing (or more accurately reverted a teeny bit towards their historic positions on economic issues, after moving to the right under Bill Clinton) and the right became vastly, vastly more right wing.
This asymmetry was apparent even back in 2012 - academics did studies on it back in 2012. Even back then the gap was mostly to due the Republicans (starting with Gingrich) becoming radicalized.
Since Trump, the right has moved even faster rightward, that making that asymmetric gap into a vast canyon. Concepts that were once relegated to the fringes and were never endorsed by the political mainstream have suddenly become major tentpoles of the Republican party.
Back in the Before Times, political discourse was dominated by bow-tied pundits in the editorial pages of newspapers. It was mostly about what are today seen as minor issues: whether taxes should be slightly lower or higher, whether immigration should be slightly lower or higher (but should definitely still happen, both parties agreed), whether a civil rights law should or shouldn’t be tweaked in the following way, and so on.
Since the ascendancy of the Trumpists, political discourse is increasingly dominated by radical right-wing extremists amplifying their signal via social media, sending out messages like: “elections are illegitimate and must be overthrown,” “science is a lie and health policy should be determined by randos on Facebook and not doctors,” “white nationalism is a legitimate philosophy and anyone who criticizes it is the real racist, actually.” Etc, etc,
Compared to such large and alarming ideas, all pundits who nowadays discuss whether taxes should be slightly higher or lower might seem “the same,” when 30 years ago people would have classified those same pundits as differing wildly in their views. But that’s not because those pundits have moved at all: it’s because the Republicans have rushed far to the right and become a party of radical extremism.
It’s possibly what you’re doing is comparing the editorial pages of other outlets to the non-editorial news content of the WSJ. The news content of the WSJ has always been solid; the editorial content of the WSJ has always skewed to the right (and did so before Trump, and before Murdoch acquired them in 2007.) Of course, since Trump, the WSJ by staying the same now appears “more reasonable” than the average right-wing newspaper - but again that’s because the right has moved so far to the right.
