THE SPINAL TAP ELECTION: Everything Is Turned Up to 11.

For many women, abortion is a hard-won right and they believe that they alone should decide whether to keep their pregnancy or terminate it. Achieving that right (codified in the 1973 Roe v .Wade decision) was the most important feminist victory since the advent of voting rights for women. Their political opponents say pregnant women should not have unfettered discretion to deal with pregnancy since it involves another, innocent life. The debate over women’s rights, human autonomy, and the protection of innocents is suffused with both practical consequences and symbolic weight.

The same is true for transgender rights. The right of adults to choose their gender is now widely accepted, a major change from 20 or 30 years ago. The battles now are whether children should be subject to irreversible changes, who should make those decisions, whether transgender women (born men) should compete against biological women and girls in sports, whether biological and transgender girls should use the same bathrooms and locker rooms, and whether taxpayers should pay for gender-changing operations on prison inmates and illegal aliens. The numbers involved in these issues are relatively small, but their symbolic weight is large. Opposing sides face each other across a cultural chasm, drenched with contempt for the opposition.

These differences are playing out against a disorienting background condition, which is often ignored when we discuss politics and culture. The basic structure of modern economies is changing rapidly. The last such disorienting economic change was the Great Depression and, before that, the Second Industrial Revolution in the 1890s (the advent of big steel, oil, chemicals, and large corporations to manage them). Both the 1890s and 1930s produced long-lasting shifts in voters’ political alignments.

We are seeing another great realignment now, driven (on the economic side) by rapid innovation in computer technology, artificial intelligence, and robotics. When those are combined with low-cost transportation, virtually free communication, and trade rules that encourage globalization, the result is social dislocation and disorientation. There is a palpable threat to employment in American manufacturing and, increasingly, in service industries.

Both political parties have responded by supporting trade protection, with Trump taking the lead. Doing so has helped him forge a populist Republican Party, centered on the working-class.

Amid these vast changes and bitter ideological differences, it is hardly surprising to see our political discourse becoming more virulent, depicting the opposition as “enemies,” as Trump has done for some elected representatives (and not just violent extremists).

The only way to contain those differences peacefully is to channel them through established democratic institutions, using well-established procedures. That’s the only hope the losing side will accept the results as legitimate.

Supporters of Al Gore and John Kerry could not be reached for comment.