Newsletter #263 — August 13, 2024
Reader Suggested Links
Highlighting links suggested by our readers. Please send us links to things that you find useful.
- US Election
Kamala Harris and the Election of Laughter and Forgetting — Thoughts on the complex psychological processes that people use to make decisions about what political candidates to support and what factors to consider (and not consider). - US Election
The truth about Trump's press conference — In the wake of the Democrats' long refusal to consider the fact that age was undermining the President's capabilities, news that Republicans may be making a similar mistake. - The Hyper-Polarization Threat
Once things get out of hand, there is no handling things — With respect to the ongoing crisis in Great Britain, an essay exploring the uncontrollable nature of runaway escalation and hyperpolarized conflict. - US Election
JD Vance Just Blurbed a Book Arguing That Progressives Are Subhuman — Another step down the slippery slope of dehumanization, runaway escalation, and catastrophe. - Israel / Hamas War
The Sabaya: How the advocates of Palestine erased the experience of the Yazidis in order to deny the rape of Jewish women — An article comparing the world's reaction to the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7 and by ISIS against the Yazidis. - Psychological Complexity
Sensing Towards Personal & Cultural Transformation — Food for thought, for those thinking about how to think about the complex and turbulent time in which we live. - US Election
Certification and Non-Discretion: a Guide to Protecting the 2024 Election — A legal analysis of steps that can and should be taken to limit at least one source of vulnerability regarding the integrity of the upcoming US election.
Colleague Activities
Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
- Networking
A Conversation about Partnering with Community Mediation Centers — DG Mawn, President of NAFCM and Caleb Christen, Co-Founder of Inter-Movement Impact Project have a thought-provoking conversation about incorporating community mediation centers into local democracy hubs. - Media Reform
AllSides Bias Checker™ — The AllSides Bias Checker provides instant bias ratings and analysis for any news article, based on AllSides' patented bias rating system. - Education
Campus Protests and Police Force: An Ethical Framework — In a new essay, Archon Fung looks at this current wave of campus protests and asks if civil disobedience is permissible, and how much disruption should be tolerated at universities today. - Education
Why Are Academics Liberal?— BCB #108 — A discussion of why there aren't more conservative academics, plus bridge-building groups to look out for, and protesting isn't change by itself. As always, thoughtful essays! - Left / Right Conflict
Biden said he wanted to bring Americans together — why didn't he? — An op-ed on Biden's polarizing approaches, and what we can learn from that - De-Escalation Strategies
Reasons To Be Optimistic About Polarization — BCB #113 — Things could be worse, they have been worse, and they will get better. - Constructive Communication
The Tennessee 11 — This intimate, fly-on-the-wall document puts you in the room where eleven local leaders from across the political spectrum gathered to discuss gun rights and safety — and to achieve the impossible: find common ground - Psychological Complexity
What Do We Mean by “Extremists” and “Moderates”? — Those terms relate more to conflict strategies than they do to conflict interests and positions. - The Hyper-Polarization Threat
Warlike "one side will win" framings of our divides — An exploration of what follows from the assumption that today's big political conflict will ultimately be resolved with a decisive victory for one side and corresponding defeat for the other. - Saving Democracy
Does deliberative democracy stand a chance in neoliberal times? — This video is part 4 of a 10-part conversation series on 10 Big Questions on Deliberative Democracy convened by at the University of Canberra. - Violence
Stemming the Tide of Political Violence — For anyone who’s feeling discouraged or dealing with difficult times, the answer isn’t to become despondent, but to recognize that we’re all Americans, and to incorporate a kinder, gentler mindset toward one another. - Authoritarianism
Understanding Youth Perceptions Towards Authoritarianism — Are young people part of the democratic problem or part of a potential solution? This report from SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins and International Republican Institute examines that question. - Left / Right Conflict
Not Just Bigotry, not Just Economics: Why Rural Voters Are Red – BCB #107 — Rural residents have strong feelings of attachment, pride and loyalty to their homes. When urbanites disparage their beloved communities, they get mad, which then creates a positive feedback cycle of anger and resentment. - Constructive Communication
Are You Willing to Walk a Mile in Their Media Shoes? — Description of an experiment you can do to try to better understand "the other side."
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.)
- Rule of Law
Chuck Schumer’s plan to create a constitutional crisis — An overview of worrying Democratic plans to dramatically transform the role of the Supreme Court (and the role of the judiciary, more generally) in US society. - Rule of Law
America Has Too Many Laws — From Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch, a summary of his new book and a compelling argument that the United States is an over-regulated society -- something that those on the left should consider seriously. - Developing a Unifying Vision
Yes, You Do Have to Tolerate the Intolerant: It has become fashionable to invoke Karl Popper’s “paradox of tolerance” to justify restrictions on free speech. That’s just plain wrong. — Tolerance and coexistence are key to making a diverse democracy work. This essay explores one of the big challenges facing promoters of tolerance -- the need to tolerate the intolerant. - Developing a Unifying Vision
Why You Should Feel Good About Liberalism: We need to get better at standing up for the greatest social technology ever devised. — An argument that liberal democracy is one of humanity's greatest accomplishments – an accomplishment that we ought to do a much better job of defending. - Violence
What’s Behind the Violent U.K. Riots — A first-rate article on the ongoing violence in Great Britain that we found to be especially illuminating (and worrying). - Violence
The Machiavellian cause of Britain’s disorder — The ongoing civil unrest in Great Britain is a warning about where hyper-polarized politics in the US (and other countries) could take us. We ought to pay attention. - Immigration
How Not to Hand Populists a Weapon — An argument for diffusing the right wing, populist threat to democracy by seriously addressing the legitimate concerns they raise about immigration. - Theories of Change
What's Really Wrong with the "Deep State" Part: I: Purging career civil servants will not make government more democratic. — The first part of a longer, in-depth exploration of the the ways in which the governmental bureaucracy is contributing to democracy's problems (as well as thoughts about possible remedies). - Intersectional Left
Freddie deBoer on “Peak Woke” — A thought-provoking discussion about the rise and fall of political ideologies and the future of the "woke" left's political agenda. - US Election
Harris is winning the all-important battle — of vibes — A look at the subjective, emotional side of the battle for the US Presidency. - US Election
Kamala Harris can't meme her way to victory. Or can she? — A reflection on the upcoming US election that contemplates the complexities of human thought, today's high-tech information systems, and the minor role being played by rational policy debate. - Superpower Conflict
Putin’s New Agents of Chaos: How Russia’s Growing Squad of Saboteurs and Assassins Threatens the West — More information about the murky boundary between democracies internal dysfunction and efforts by outside powers to promote that dysfunction. - Race / Anti-Racism
The declining significance of race, quantified — Evidence that we are, in fact, making significant progress toward addressing racial inequities. - Israel / Hamas War
Israel on the Brink: If the Israelis find themselves facing difficult choices, so do their enemies. — An in-depth look at the complex and difficult choices facing the major players in the ongoing Gaza conflict. - Intersectional Left
The Cancellation Playbook: It is time to rewrite the playbook. It will take a collective effort to restore balance within arts institutions and remove the chilling effect of cancellation—if we work together, it's achievable. — An overview of the strategy that those targeted for political cancellation can use to to defend their freedoms and help provide society with access to a robust debate on controversial issues. - Violence
How to Prevent a Spiral of Political Violence in America — From Foreign Affairs, a report on new research on strategies for limiting the threat posed by political violence in the US. - Psychological Complexity
Why do people believe true things? Ignorance and misperceptions are not puzzling. The challenge is to explain why some people see reality accurately. — A look at the complex psychology underlying the ability to distinguish truth from often more comforting falsehoods. - Left / Right Conflict
How Trump and Black Lives Matter Combined to Change American Politics — The review of the latest political science insights into the forces that produced the United States' contemporary political crisis. - Social Complexity
A Dystopian Effort Is Underway in the Pacific Northwest to Pick Ecological Winners and Losers — The complexities of the biological world are, in many ways, similar to the complexity of human society. This essay explores the limits of trying to engineer such systems. - Bad-Faith Actors
The Red Scare Was No Moral Panic — In the context of hybrid warfare, bad-faith actors, and ongoing geopolitical intrigue -- a look back at the "red scare" of the 1950s. - Countering Over-Simplification
Can't we get back to solving problems? — Thoughts on how to transform dysfunctional democratic institutions in ways that would enable us to genuinely solve problems.
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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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