Newsletter #318 — February 2, 2025
Reader Suggested Links
Highlighting links suggested by our readers. Please send us links to things that you find useful.
- US Politics
Last Boys at the Beginning of History — With the focus on Donald Trump's youngest male supporters, this article offers a great example of how quality journalism can help build genuine understanding across deep political divisions. - Psychological Complexity
The Six Principles of Stupidity — For a time when stupidity seems to be on the rise most everywhere, a review of what it is, what causes it, and how can it be limited. - US Politics
Democrats’ brutal poll problem — New public opinion data that suggests that the public's repudiation of the Democratic Party runs even deeper than previously thought. - Authoritarianism
Things Worth Remembering: ‘We Fell Morally Ill’ — A retrospective (but highly relevant in today's context) look at the ways in which Václav Havel helped restore his country's government and the people's faith in that government. - US Politics
How Trump's Lawbreaking Strategy Is Designed to Work — A look at how the Trump administration believes that it can be successful, even though many of its actions are unlikely to survive a legal challenge. - Constructively Addressing Complex Issues
How to Remain a Reality-Based Human in 2025 — A somewhat lighthearted, but also perceptive, set of recommendations for staying focused on what really matters during the Trump era. - Artificial Intelligence
DeepSeek has created a 21st-century Sputnik moment — An article that examines the national security implications of the global AI technology race by comparing it to an earlier era and the shock of discovering that the Soviets could challenge US technology.
Colleague Activities
Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
- Saving Democracy
Democracy Playbook 2025 — From Brookings, thoughts about how we might better protect the integrity of elections, promote the rule of law, combat corruption, and counter disinformation. - Saving Democracy
How You Can Protect Democracy — An article describing 29 concrete actions you can take right now to protect democracy. - Bridge Building
5 Ways Liberals Can Build More Bridges with Conservatives — An article based on a conversations with Luke Nathan Phillips of Braver Angels about the state of depolarization and bridge-building endeavors. - Developing a Unifying Vision
How We Can Block, Bridge, and Build Our Democratic Future Together — Julia Roig and Jarvis Williams lay out the basic framework that the Horizon's Network is following to strengthen democracy and combat authoritarian trends. - Developing a Unifying Vision
Pluralism in the Trump Era — A growing movement of "new pluralists" has made real headway. But now we have come to the hard part of the journey. - Theories of Change
How to Stop Fighting Each Other and Start Fighting the System with Denise Padín Collazo — A podcast on building a better world without tearing each other down, and how to approach conflicts constructively so that our energy stays focused on the bigger fight — the systemic issues affecting our communities. - Peacebuilding
What Does Peacebuilding Achieve — n December, the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding held an event on how peace is built at the international level, featuring AfP’s Executive Director, Liz Hume. - Saving Democracy
The Democracy Index & The Contrarian — The Democracy Index is a project that will use the expertise of lawyers and political scientists to track developments in Trump 2.0., based on facts and transparent analysis. - Peacebuilding
Measuring Peace: How the Peacebuilding Field Can Enable and Evaluate Effective Interreligious Dialogue — The goal of the initiative was to gather and assess the evidence about the effectiveness of interreligious dialogue (IRD) as a peacebuilding approach, and to promote monitoring, evaluation, and learning. - US Politics
Trump’s Return -- Americans' Views in A New Political Chapter — As President Trump begins his second term, More in Common highlights five key takeaways from our latest poll focused on Americans’ views, misperceptions, and aspirations in this new era. - Race / Anti-Racism
Bridging America’s Political and Racial Divides — Peter Coleman shared several key findings from six studies that can help mobilize citizens to heal growing divisions. - Disinformation
Disinformation Stops With You — A useful infograpic explaining how we all have the power to stop foreign (and domestic) disinformation campaigns. - Disinformation
MediaWise Education Resources — MediaWise provides resources to help people identify misinformation through engaging, innovative media literacy education. Their goal is to inspire savvy digital citizens who know that when facts prevail, democracy wins.
News and Opinion
From around the web, more insight into the nature of our conflict problems, limits of business-as-usual thinking, and things people are doing to try to make things better. (Formerly, Beyond Intractability in Context.)
- Superpower Conflict
A Secret Cable and a Clue to Where U.S.-Russia Relations Went Wrong — As what we once thought was a Cold War victory disintegrates, thoughts about how pivotal historical events can cast very long shadows. - Psychological Complexity
Twenty Lessons On Tyranny — This might better be titled "Twenty Lessons on Preventing Tyranny." - US Politics
Democrats Should Embrace Ideological Pluralism — An argument that Democrats, if they want to "look like America," ought to go beyond skin deep traits like race and really embrace differences of opinion. - Developing a Unifying Vision
A Renewed Liberalism Can Meet the Populist Challenge — The description of how liberals could respond to their critics in ways that would allow them to build a new kind of liberalism more capable of attracting populist support. - Saving Democracy
Here's What You Can Do to Keep Democracy Alive During Trump's Second Term — From George Lakoff, another set of recommendations for those wishing to play a positive role during the coming Trump Presidency. - US Politics
Donald Trump Is Just Watching This Crisis Unfold — An argument that Donald Trump is not making the transition from a candidate (focused on observing and criticizing events) to a President responsible for guiding those events. - Psychological Complexity
Attention Is the Fuel of American Politics, and Trump Knows It — A look at the enormously important and little understood role that the ability to get people's "attention" plays in political and social life. - Power-Over Partisans
How a German Thinker Explains MAGA Morality — More food for thought for those wishing to understand today's complex political reality. This article focuses on the important distinction between political and personal spheres of life. - US Politics
The Democrats’ Governance Problem — As Democrats struggle to understand how why they are so widely distrusted, a call for them to take a hard look at the ways in which they actually govern. - Freedom of Speech
Martin Gurri: The Great American Debate Begins Again — A hopeful article celebrating Trump's efforts to remove cancel culture restrictions on open debate. The challenge is to avoid replacing them with similar Trump-era restrictions. - Immigration
Something Extraordinary Is Happening All Over the World — A review of the many ways in which large-scale human migrations are transforming (and placing great stress on) societies all over the world. - Race / Anti-Racism
How DEI Conquered the University of Colorado — Based upon an open records review of University of Colorado faculty recruiting documents, this article reveals just how deeply DEI criteria now dominate universities. - Runaway Escalation
When Intent Stops Mattering - A Political Parable — A very perceptive exploration of what happens when the motivations behind individual actions are no longer considered relevant when assessing those actions. - Civil Society
What America needs is some big citizenship — A proposal outlining ways in which the creation of a new and much larger national service program might strengthen democracy. - Psychological Complexity
Why Common Problems Are Often Worse Than We Realize — An article about an interesting cognitive bias that plays a big role in undermining our ability to protect ourselves -- the notion that familiarity breeds complacency. - Superpower Conflict
The Deep and Dangerous Roots of Trump’s Foreign Policy — A critique of Trump's apparent inclination to return us to the era of old-fashioned, sphere of influence, great power politics. - Superpower Conflict
The Open Society and Its New Enemies — A lengthy and comprehensive assessment of the long-term trends underlying democracy's current trials and a great starting point for people who want to understand the big picture. - Disinformation
As conflict rates soar, misinformation is getting worse — Reflections on the all-important challenge of controlling the weaponized disinformation that accompanies hyper-polarized conflict without getting co-opted by one side or the other. - Race / Anti-Racism
Fake White Guilt Drove Decades-Long DEI Mania — For those trying to understand the hostility with which so many people view DEI-related programs and initiatives, one conservative's attempt to explain his views. - US Politics
So Much for Not Taking Trump Literally — It is been said that Trump supporters take him seriously but not literally and his opponents take him literally but not seriously. It seems like it's time to take him both seriously and literally. - Culture and Religion
If you have no problem with this, carry on as you are. — An alarming and doubtless extremely controversial argument that the West is sleepwalking into a gigantic clash of civilizations with global Islam.
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About the MBI Newsletters
Two or three times a week, Guy and Heidi Burgess, the BI Directors, share some of our thoughts on political hyper-polarization and related topics. We also share essays from our colleagues and other contributors, and every week or so, we devote one newsletter to annotated links to outside readings that we found particularly useful relating to U.S. hyper-polarization, threats to peace (and actual violence) in other countries, and related topics of interest. Each Newsletter is posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.
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