Newsletter #257 — July 25, 2024
Highlighted Links
Time sensitive links to near term opportunities.
- Networking
7/29 IMIP Hosted Generate Democracy! "Open House" — The Inter-Movement Impact Project (IMIP) is an informal, Zoom-focused effort to bring together and exchange information between the many individuals and organizations who are part of the ongoing, "massively parallel" effort to defend and strengthen democracy. On July 29 at 3:00 pm Eastern/noon PDT, IMIP (in conjunction with LinkedIn group Generate Democracy!) is hosting an online Open House for those interested in learning more about the many ways in which people are working to strengthen democracy and how YOU can get involved in this effort. Click the above link for more information. Here's the calendar link for those who would like to attend.
Reader Suggested Links
Highlighting links suggested by our readers. Please send us links to things that you find useful.
- US Election
What Trump Means When He Tells Us to ‘Fight’ — An in-depth look at what Trump means when he calls upon his supporters to "fight" the Democratic establishment. - Violence
Who Normalized Political Violence in America? — As modern societies slide ever closer to the abyss of large-scale political violence, thoughts about who is contributing to the problem and how. - Persuasion
Why Are Democrats Speaking to America in Ancient Greek? — From John McWhorter, an analysis of the language we use to define and defend democracy -- language that makes it harder to communicate critical concepts to the general public. - Israel / Hamas War
U.A.E. Puts 84 Civil Society Members on Trial Again, Sentencing 43 to Life — A disturbing window into the the way in which the United Arab Emirates, one of the more "moderate" Arab regimes, treats dissidents. - Authoritarianism
The Imperial Presidency Unleashed — From Foreign Affairs, an argument that the recent Supreme Court decision in the Trump immunity case dangerously increases the power of the President. - Israel / Hamas War
The Lebanon War Is Coming — An update on the increasing risk of a catastrophic war in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel. - Israel / Hamas War
How Israel Turned the Tide in Rafah — A reminder that wars are decided on the battlefield not by outside observers offering their opinions of how things ought to be.
Colleague Activities
Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
- Persuasion
What, Me Think? — A government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people’ is utterly dependent upon- wait for it…. the PEOPLE. Ashok Pannikar's initial Substack essay on democracy and critical thinking. - Constructive Communication
Online Community Organizing Is Not an Oxymoron — Daniel Stid's report on a conversation with Deepti Doshi, co-director of NewPublic, a nonprofit working to imagine new media and technologies that can build constructive online spaces that serve democratic purposes. - Political Moderates
Project 2025: A cross-partisan approach — The start of a month-long series of articles examining each policy area of Project 2025 with a cross-partisan lens. - Ethics
Citizens for Ethics — Using bold legal actions and in-depth investigations, CREW targets government officials who sacrifice the common good to special interests and personal gain. - The Scale and Complexity Problem
Adapt: Hope in the Face of the Polycrisis — The second of four articles on "the polyicrsis." This one looks at characteristics critical to adaptability: trust, civic capacity, accountable leadership, reliable information, functional infrastructure, and education, among others. - Runaway Escalation
How polarization will destroy itself — Political polarization and extremism are much more fragile than we realize, as long as we maintain freedom of speech, rule of law, market competition, and free and fair elections. - Psychological Complexity
Overcoming Ideological Inferences: Breaking Free from Snap Judgments — A conversation with Carson Sander on how we make snap judgments about people and how to avoid doing that to break down the prevailing political polarization. - Saving Democracy
The American experiment – a democratic republic – is worth defending — Seth David Radwell argues that we need a deep appreciation for why our democratic republic, with all its historical chapters of tragic injustice, and present day flaws and warts, is still the best example of self-government in our planet’s recorded history. - Civil Society
Practitioner Mobilization For Democracy - Launch Event Recap — A summary of (with videos from) NCDD's launch of their Practitioner Mobilization effort, seeking to get mediators and other third parties involved in the effort to encourage constructive democratic engagement. - Developing a Unifying Vision
5 Ways to Build Bridging Social Capital and Develop a Sense of Common Purpose — Five ways to counter the sense of loneliness and helplessness that is driving polarization and the weakening of our community and civic ties. - Social Complexity
From Waves to Ecosystems: The Next Stage of Democratic Innovation — This white paper reviews the limitations of elections, the different waves of democratic innovation and efforts to connect them, and key challenges and strategies for building healthy ecosystems of democracy. - Theories of Change
Between Thick and Thin: Improving Public Engagement through a Wicked Problem Lens — One of the key concepts tied to deliberative engagement is the recognition that many of the issues we must engage in our communities can be best understood as wicked problems - Violence
To understand unreasonable reactions to Trump's shooting, imagine Biden being shot — A "turnabout test" can help us see emotional biases in our thinking — our colleague Zach Ellwood got this op-ed in Newsweek.
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.)
- Developing a Unifying Vision
The rise of the abundance faction — An interesting look at what is likely to be a very attractive social and political movement -- one focused on "abundance" instead of austerity. - Saving Democracy
Eitan Hersh on the Perils of Political Hobbyism — An interview exploring a critically important topic, "political hobbyism," -- something that is very different from responsible citizenship. - Violence
An Expert on Political Violence Sees a Way Out of America’s Crisis — An interview with Rachel Kleinfeld outlining her concrete suggestions for limiting political violence. - Saving Democracy
This Is What a Functioning Political Party Looks Like — At a time in which the power of the United States' political parties has been reduced in favor of grassroots voter power, an argument for restoring some of the power of the party apparatus. - US Election
Today’s Democrats love unity and hate arguing. Here’s why. — An essay exploring the advantages and disadvantages of the left's and the Democrat's reluctance to challenge one another. - Family / Gender / LBGTQ+
Assortative Mating and Income Inequality — The report on the stodgy demographic term "assortive mating" -- a phenomenon that contributes greatly to both political tensions and societal inequality. - Saving Democracy
Our Solution to the Crisis of Democracy — A report on another big picture look at the problems facing democracy and the things that ought to be a done to address those problems. - Social Complexity
What’s to blame for the CrowdStrike mess? Our drive for efficiency. — Lessons from the CrowdStrike fiasco for those interested in societal complexity and the vulnerabilities and downsides of our extremely efficient global economy. - US Election
How the Bet on an 81-Year-Old Joe Biden Turned Into an Epic Miscalculation — A postmortem analysis of how the Democrats came to commit to the Biden candidacy despite repeated warnings that he was no longer up to the challenge. - US Election
Republican Populists Are Responding to Something Real — A look at the populism of of the United States' Republican Party and it's relationship with the party's elites -- a conflict within the larger conflict between the left and the right. - Violence
How Cycles of Political Violence End — As the taboos against political violence in the United States continue to erode, a timely analysis of where we are likely to be headed (and how we might reverse that trend). - US Election
The Trump Campaign Has Peaked Too Soon — In the context of the upcoming US election, an essay on the surprisingly widespread and useful applications of Clausewitz' concept of a "culminating point." - Intersectional Left
The Woke Style in American Politics — An observation that many of the woke, cancel culture political tactics pioneered by the left are now being adopted by the right. - Climate / Environment
Climate Fueled Extreme Weather — The first in a series of posts looking at the ways in which scientific and popular images of the relationship between climate change and extreme weather have diverged. - #N/A
- Developing a Unifying Vision
Why centrism might be our salvation — An argument that the key to defusing the United States' political tensions might lie in something obvious -- developing the middle ground between our polarized extremes. - US Election
How Is This Going to Work? — A practical analysis of what Democrats need to do and the problems they face following Biden's withdrawal from the race. - Disinformation
The Era of the Noble Lie — A thought provoking essay on what lies beyond political spin -- outright lies (supposedly for some virtuous purpose) that do a lot of harm. - Class Inequity
Biden’s bad rent-control idea has no upside — An explanation of why rent and price controls are a poor way of solving affordability problems. - US Election
Criticize Trump, but Don’t Demonize Him — Practical advice for those looking for ways to oppose Donald Trump's candidacy without further driving the hyperpolarization spiral and partisan animosities. - Artificial Intelligence
Mechanical Intelligence and Counterfeit Humanity — A thought-provoking chance to look back and reflect upon the rapid evolution of information technologies over the last 50 years and its impact on society.
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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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