Congratulations to all candidates who won their primaries Tuesday. Go forth with passion, compassion and class. Mostly, avoid fueling the cold civil war as we enter the dog days of summer.

We aren’t the first to use “civil war” to describe the culture’s bitter and growing political divide heading into the fall elections.

USA Today columnist Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, writes of our country’s “soft civil war.” He cites a series of other columnists and pundits who conclude we’re in the early stages of a war that could spur mass violence and further divide a country of states united for nearly 250 years.

Reynolds’ warning came one day before the U.S. Supreme Court further enraged the left by ruling in favor of President Donald Trump’s national security travel ban, seen by opponents as blatant discrimination against Muslims.

“Hollywood has basically turned its products, and its award shows, into showcases for ‘the resistance.’ Americans are already sorting themselves into communities that are predominantly red or blue,” Reynolds writes.

Trump supporters increasingly find themselves shouted down at restaurants and other public venues. The owner of Virginia’s Red Hen restaurant ordered White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave. After Sanders left for home, her family tried to choose another nearby restaurant. An angry mob followed them and demanded they flee the neighborhood entirely because of their relation to Sanders.

A separate mob forced Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to leave a restaurant, as another mob showed up at her home to shout her down.

History will forever remember Trump for targeting opponents with nasty, personal and hurtful tweets. His opponents likewise use social media to marginalize Trump, actively organizing to torment his staffers and supporters at universities, restaurants and a variety of social and cultural events.

“Will it get worse?” Reynolds asks. “Probably. To have a civil war, soft or otherwise, takes two sides. But as pseudonymous tweeter Thomas H. Crown notes, it’s childishly easy in these days to identify people in mobs, and then to dispatch similar mobs to their homes and workplaces. Eventually, he notes, it becomes ‘protesters all the way down, and if we haven’t yet figured out that can lead to political violence, we’re dumb.’ ”

Bloomberg columnist Francis Wilkinson predicts “hell to pay” nationally if Democrats lose the midterms and fail to gain control of a congressional chamber. If Republicans lose, expect impeachment proceedings that could raise the wrath of hell.

Wilkinson quotes acclaimed political scientist Thomas Schaller saying “we’re at the beginning of a soft civil war … I don’t know if the country gets out of it whole.”

This is what a country looks like when people take or reject relationships — with friends, neighbors and colleagues — on a basis of shrill political views. It is what a country looks like when friendships, and even familial relations, no longer revolve around religious institutions, secular clubs, schools, hobbies, careers or other causes less divisive than partisan politics.

It is hard to eject a person from a restaurant because a human has feelings. View the individual as a hideous political symbol, and we can treat her as a monster.

Candidates for office this fall can do their part in diffusing the war-like hostility that has two factions of the country — loosely defined as left and right — hating each other.

They can start by reaching out to the primary candidates they defeated and their supporters. Include them, respect them as humans and listen.

As a next step, candidates can enter the general campaign by viewing their opponents as individuals with families, friends and convictions they believe in. Candidates and their supporters can and should respect the personal dignity of opponents they need to defeat.

Colorado candidates can focus on common goals, advancing competing ideas for the best possible outcomes. They can, and should, treat this as a sport.

We need more health care at better prices. We need better roads and bridges. We need better schools. We need better jobs. We need clean air and water. We need fewer people struggling and more moving up the economic ladder. On these desired outcomes, all can agree.

Let the games begin, but let the cold war end. Before it gets hot.

The Gazette editorial board