Newsletter #296 — November 10, 2024
Reader Suggested Links
Highlighting links suggested by our readers. Please send us links to things that you find useful.
- US Election
Democrats and the Case of Mistaken Identity Politics — Now that the election-related taboo against Democratic self-criticism has been lifted, thoughtful ideas about why identity-based politics was doomed to failure. - US Election
Four THB Takeaways from the Incredible 2024 US Election — Another set of thoughtful, and somewhat different, reflections on the election with one stunning map highlighting just how much politics has changed. - Israel / Hamas War
Bill Clinton speech in Michigan about Israel — From Bill Clinton, a man who tried as hard as anyone to make the two-state solution a reality, a talk, given in Michigan just before the election, outlining his views on the Mideast crisis. - Family / Gender / LBGTQ+
Democrats Need To Realize It’s Not Always Easy To Be a Man — Amid all of the concern about obstacles faced by women and girls, an argument for also attending to the challenges facing men and boys. - US Election
Why Trump’s Victory Is, For Millions Of Us, Cathartic — A very personal reaction to Trump's election from someone who used to be closely aligned with the left but who found himself canceled for raising what he regards as perfectly legitimate criticisms. - US Election
The Art of the Bullshitter — Yet another attempt to understand the effectiveness of President Trump's rhetorical "weave" and its loose relationship with objective facts. - US Election
Sometimes when I get mad, when I get really mad, sometimes I write a poem — A poem by one of our colleagues on the U.S. election and what comes next.
Colleague Activities
Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
- US Election
How To Win and Lose an Election — Published on election day, Jonathan Stray points out that no matter what happens, we will all have new responsibilities tonight. - US Election
Can Dignity Prevail in America’s Polarized Landscape? — More In Common writes that though their work with UNITE and their Dignity Index, they hope to encourage a cultural shift towards noticing and elevating dignity in political discourse. - US Election
Ready for the Rollercoaster Again? America’s Strange Relationship with Calm — David Beckemeyer argues that Biden gave us calm. Yet now Americans seem to hunger for drama and disruption again. - US Election
Bipartisanship Reinvigorated — Ideas for moving beyond today's hyper-polarization and figuring out how to really make bipartisanship work - De-Escalation Strategies
To avoid destruction, we must own our role in political polarization — Zach Elwood argues that both sides have contributed to political polarization, though in different ways and for different reasons. We must recognize that, and recognize the legitimacy of the other side's concerns. - US Election
What issues are most important to the Hidden Tribes this election? — A comparison of concerns of progressive activists, devoted conservatives, and the "exhausted majority." The one commonality: high cost of living and inflation. - US Election
AllSides Story of the Week: Trump Elected President — AllSides compares the right's and left's reaction to the U.S. Presidential election. - US Election
Answering all of your biggest post-election questions. — From Tangle, an organization really committed to telling both sides of the story, questions and answers about the election. - Peacebuilding
How Do We Get Through This? | Episode 2: Great Hatred and Little Room: Building Peace in Northern Ireland — A second podcast from Beyond Conflict, this one looks at what the U.S. can learn from the Northern Ireland peace process. - US Election
Lessons for Kamala Harris - 1 — The first of three essays by Ashok Panikkar on the Democratic loss. Here he explains what the elite of the cosmopolitan world don't understand about democracy (or, as he says, life on planet Earth.) - US Election
How Progressivism Turned off Voters — The Better Conflict Bulletin agrees that bold ideas are necessary for social change. Yet there's no substitute for knowing the people you claim to be serving. - Non-Violence
Protection and Resilience Strategies for Nonviolent Activists — From the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies, a report on the nature of threats nonviolent activists face, and how they can be resisted or mitigated. - Violence
Spread the word: Americans do not want political violence — An article by James Coan of More Like US, arguing that Americans dramatically overestimate the share of people in the other political party who support politically motivated violence. - Peacebuilding
Introducing the Peace Impact Calculator: A Comprehensive Tool for Measuring Social Impact — A tool developed as a complement to the Peace Impact Framework provides a way for organizations and individuals to assess and report outcomes of their projects in a structured and accessible manner.
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.)
- US Election
Voters to Elites: Do You See Me Now? — One of the very best articles that we've seen on the election. If you can only read a few, read this one. - US Election
10 Reasons You Didn't See This Coming — A succinct, must-read article that explains, with exceptional clarity, why so many Democrats were blindsided by the election's result. - Israel / Hamas War
Last Night’s Pogrom in Amsterdam — A harrowing account of the recent attack on Israeli soccer fans -- an attack that in many ways emulates the horrific anti-Jewish pogroms of the past. - Israel / Hamas War
The Age of the Pogrom Returns — From Bret Stephens of the New York Times, one of the scariest sentences I've ever read: "My advice to Europe’s besieged Jewish communities: Remember what Kishinev foreshadowed — and please get out while you still can." - US Election
What now? With the election behind us, here are five ways forward — From the Foundation against Intolerance and Racism, concrete ideas for constructively navigating the post-election period. - US Election
Treat Trump Like a Normal President — After 8 years of treating Trump as an extraordinary threat that cannot be challenged by ordinary means, an argument for doing just that -- trust the system and work within the process. - US Election
The Elites Had It Coming — From Thomas Frank, the man who wrote "What's the matter with Kansas?," helpful insights for those struggling to understand Trump's success. - US Election
It’s Time to Resist the Resistance — As Democrats struggle to decide how to respond to the Trump presidency, an argument against replaying the resistance strategy used during his first term. - US Election
Election 2024: The illusion of division hits a tipping point — After so much nervous anticipation about the possibility of political violence following the election, reflections on why that didn't happen (and the possibility that we are not as bitterly divided as we think we are). - US Election
Democrats Need Working-Class Voters. Maybe Now They’ll Act Like It — From Nicholas Kristof, reflections on the relationship between the struggles of his working class childhood friends and the election's outcome. - US Election
Millions of Movers Reveal American Polarization in Action — A statistical look, with lots of revealing graphics, at the ways in which Americans are self segregating based on political beliefs. - US Election
The Book That Predicted the 2024 Election — An interview with the author of "Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP" -- a book that was ahead of its time in understanding the changing political landscape. - US Election
We’re About to Find Out Who Trump’s Victory Belongs To — For the case of Donald Trump, an essay exploring the election day transition from candidate appeals for constituent support to constituent appeals for support from now elected candidates. - US Election
Francis Fukuyama on Trump 47 — Francis Fukuyama's analysis of the election. - US Election
Russia’s Election Meddling: Farce After Tragedy — An update on Russia's muddled and, hopefully, not very effective efforts to influence the election. - Israel / Hamas War
Trump to Renew ‘Maximum Pressure’ Campaign Against Iran — Elections do have consequences -- sometimes very big ones. This article looks at the effect of the Biden/Trump foreign policy switchover on the wars raging in the Middle East. - US Election
The Obama Machine — An explanation of the many ways in which today's Democratic politics seems to resemble the political machines of the past. (And, a look at Obama's ties to the Daley machine in Chicago). - US Election
How Red and Blue America Shop, Eat and Live — A clever new way of looking at differences in the way in which polarization is reflected in our day-to-day lives. This statistical analysis shows, for hundreds of businesses, which ones operate in Republican and Democratic areas. - Peacebuilding
How Autocracy Prevailed in Tunisia: And Why Any Future Democratic Renewal Will Depend on an Entirely New Movement — A post-mortem on the failure of Tunisia's Arab Spring revolution -- a revolution that, at the time, seemed like the one most likely to succeed. - US Election
Five Things You Can Do to Make America a Better Place Tomorrow (No Matter Who Wins) — For those looking for concrete, positive steps that they can take in the current environment, five ideas. - US Election
Trump has big plans for ‘Day 1’ on immigration, energy and more — Just as Biden's selection ushered in big changes in US society, Trump promises to do the same. This article reviews his intentions. - US Election
The Shattering of the Democratic Coalition — An essay explaining why the winning electoral coalition that Democrats thought that they had is no longer viable. - Communication Complexity
Trump’s Win Cemented It: New Media Is Leaving the Old Guard Behind — A reminder that we can't understand political conflict without understanding the constantly changing nature of the system that communicates political ideas. - US Election
Book Review: The Road to Wigan Pier — For those who wondered what Orwell would think about contemporary events, a book about how he approached very similar challenges in his time. - Constructively Addressing Complex Issues
How Science Must Change — For a time when science is so widely distrusted, concrete suggestions about how science might re-earn the public's trust. - Interstate War
Why America Stopped Winning Wars — For an era in which so many wars never seem end, a controversial and provocative argument for taking the steps needed to truly win. - Constructively Addressing Complex Issues
Why Study History? — A timeless argument worth repeating often -- those who fail to understand history are condemned to repeat it. - US Election
We Don’t Have Time to Waste in Despair — For those opposed to the things that President-elect Trump has promised to do, thoughts about how they can work within the system to effectively oppose such things. - Communication Complexity
Misinformation: A Flawed Concept — Insights into the extraordinarily complex problem of misinformation -- how to identify it, how to combat it, and how to keep it from becoming its own brand of misinformation. - Freedom of Speech
Lesson 1: Be willing to drive the bus into a wall — For those supportive of the work of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, an article describing how they do what they do.
Please Contribute Your Ideas To This Discussion!
In order to prevent bots, spammers, and other malicious content, we are asking contributors to send their contributions to us directly. If your idea is short, with simple formatting, you can put it directly in the contact box. However, the contact form does not allow attachments. So if you are contributing a longer article, with formatting beyond simple paragraphs, just send us a note using the contact box, and we'll respond via an email to which you can reply with your attachment. This is a bit of a hassle, we know, but it has kept our site (and our inbox) clean. And if you are wondering, we do publish essays that disagree with or are critical of us. We want a robust exchange of views.
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.
NOTE! If you signed up for this Newsletter and don't see it in your inbox, it might be going to one of your other emails folder (such as promotions, social, or spam). Check there or search for beyondintractability@substack.com and if you still can't find it, first go to our Substack help page, and if that doesn't help, please contact us.
If you like what you read here, please ....