Is this how we can hope to run a country, hope the other side dies out?

More or less. One of our biggest problems is lack of generational change and, so, fights not being settled by time.

A writer like Victor Davis Hanson gets plaudits for condemning cities as crime-filled hellholes, a truthy vision when he started which hasn't been the experience of anyone under 35. Or consider the hash made of the IRS, a mostly toothless department with an excellent customer service arm; its reputation was made in the 1970s and people who remember that haven't moved on. It really feels like the GOP's demographics have filled it up with people who think the 1970s never ended. And that's pushed out people like Reihan Salam and Josh Barro who, because younger, were engaged with our current situation.

Let me flip to Democrats for a moment. Support for gun control seems partially driven by age and I'd bet that reflects the same "70s never ended" dynamic.

The politics of people under 40 are radically different right now than their elders because so many events which shaped prior generations just don't exist. We never did a crime wave or stagflation or Vietnam; nor have we ever lived in a nation with a surplus of well-paid middle skill jobs. And, so, we've also never done the conservatism of Reihan Salam or felt the influence of libertarians like Will Wilkinson, people who post-date the FDR-LBJ state.

So what have we got now? We have a politics, especially a conservative politics, fighting not just the last war, but a war whose veterans draw Social Security.