Newsletter 330 — March 12, 2025
Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess
Can we lower toxic polarization while still opposing Trump?
Originally published in The Hill on February 22, 2025.
I work full-time on reducing toxic political polarization, an effort that is often misunderstood. Many assume the goal is to make Americans “calm down” or “meet in the middle” — to ignore their political passions. That’s why some Democrats and Republicans see such work as “helping the bad guys.”
I have received messages about Trump’s recent bull-in-a-china-shop activity saying things like, “I want to reduce political toxicity, too, but we’re on the road to autocracy. The bridge-building can wait.” This reflects a common misunderstanding: that depolarization is at odds with activism. But one can do both — and I’d argue aiming to do both actually makes one’s activism more persuasive and less likely to create pushback.
Some people also see this work as overly idealistic and “kumbaya.” I get why. People trying to reduce polarization often emphasize that we do have much more in common than we think. While that is true, it can also make people think we’re naïve.
But conflict resolution principles can exist alongside passion, frustration — even immense fear and anger. If such ideas were not of value during the course of a conflict, they’d be worthless.
Working on this problem is about helping Americans see that we are caught in a self-reinforcing cycle of contempt and provocation, what political scientist Lee Drutman calls the “doom loop.” When people see that, they will also see they can pursue their goals while trying to avoid contributing to the toxicity that’s tearing us apart.
Others sometimes assume that I’m pro-Trump, or maybe that I lack strong feelings about him. No — I am highly critical of Trump because I believe he amplifies us-versus-them hostility. Even some gung-ho Trump supporters I’ve talked to see his personality as being like “gasoline on the fire” of our divides. I agree with that, and I think it’s a very bad thing, no matter his political beliefs.
But I also see many sources of division around us. I often write about the ways liberals have contributed to toxicity. Our divides are self-reinforcing: contempt leads to contempt; righteous certainty provokes more of the same. Both sides focus on the worst of the other, fueling the belief that “they started it” and therefore it’s not our responsibility to lower the temperature.
I think a lot of anti-Trump approaches have backfired. When liberals unfairly demean Trump supporters, or interpret Trump’s statements in the worst possible light, they deepen conservatives’ feeling of being under siege and push them further into warlike thinking.
This works both ways. Aggressive, insulting rhetoric by Republicans can make liberals feel more defensive. For example, saying that Democratic stances on immigration stem only from a desire to win votes is insulting, and will strike many as a malicious smear. Such insults create pushback — and can even shift people’s stances in the opposite direction.
This is the core problem of polarization. We escalate, thinking we’re fighting back effectively, but we’re actually reinforcing the cycle.
That’s why we must distinguish between people’s beliefs and their approach to conflict. My main objection to Trump isn’t his beliefs, but how he engages. Imagine a version of Trump who held the same beliefs but who avoided contempt and tried to de-escalate tensions. That version of Trump would not have, for example, insisted that he won the 2020 election.
When we separate what someone believes from how they engage, we can criticize them in more nuanced and persuasive ways, allowing people to say, “I agree with your views but I disagree with your approach.” This clarity helps us focus on what matters and makes it easier to reduce support for us-versus-them approaches.
One simple thing we can all do is avoid righteous, hateful judgments about the entire “other side.” Since Trump’s election, many anti-Trump voices have said insulting, alienating things about half of the country. People opposed to Trump must recognize how unhelpful that is — just more of the same dynamics that helped elect Trump in the first (and second) place.
A lot of voting in America is more about what we’re afraid of than what we like about our own group. And there are many defensible reasons for disliking Democrats’ approaches. Anti-Trumpers should seek to understand the grievances and concerns that led to his victories — and keep those in mind as they pursue their goals.
Dismissing Trump voters as immoral and irredeemable isn’t right, and will only push them further away. I would say the same to Republicans: ignoring or mocking all Democratic concerns will likely result in driving people away — and may cost you elections.
Those opposed to Trump should learn from the many experts who write about how working against opponents in more persuasive and less polarizing ways: people like Daniel Stid, Rachel Kleinfeld, Yascha Mounk and Erica Etelson, to name a few.
We should also be cautious about “catastrophizing.” When we speak as if the sky has already fallen, we help create an arms-race mentality. I’ve heard some people act as if it’s a certainty that Republicans will refuse to ever relinquish power in future elections. Framing that as inevitable makes it easy for Republicans to believe such concerns are only an excuse for aggressive countermeasures (as was the case for some perceptions of attempts to remove Trump from the ballot). We should keep in mind that, in conflict, it can be hard to distinguish between defense and offense.
All of us will fight for the things that we feel moved to fight for. But we can perhaps try to think of doing it in a way that doesn’t fan the flames of division, that seeks to persuade at least some of our opponents. Even as some Americans see Trump as a uniquely dangerous leader, we should also keep in mind the deeper roots of how we got here — the decades-long build-up of contempt and polarized thinking — and work against that as well.
Guy and Heidi's Thoughts
We want to start with a story that we shared in Newsletter 271 on September 8, 2024. Apologies to the few of you who remember it. In 1988 we got our first big grant from the Hewlett Foundation's Conflict Resolution Program to start a conflict resolution theory-building center at the University of Colorado. When we told our friends about it, they were horrified. They thought we were traitors. Many of them were environmental advocates who fought polluters and other "bad guys" in court. They had no interest in conflict resolution-related processes because they thought (sometimes with good reason) that they would force them into unwanted and unwise compromises. The same was true for those we knew who were doing social justice work. Our attempts to convince them otherwise almost always ended in failure.
A few years later we began to focus increasingly on intractable conflicts — those often highly destructive conflicts that seemed to go on forever and that no one was able to resolve. We began to ask a different question: rather than asking "how can we resolve conflict," we started to ask "how can we engage in conflict more constructively?" Suddenly our friends — and many other people we didn't know — became interested. They knew that the conflicts they were involved in often weren't going well. They knew they were often spending a lot of time, money, and heartache, and were not even winning. They were either stuck in a stalemate, or they were losing. (Almost nobody thought they were winning.) Everyone agreed that they would like to find better ways to engage in conflict, which they hoped, would help them win more often. Keep in mind, that was 1990!
Look where we are now in 2025. If people thought their conflicts were not going well then — what would they think about America now? And what do people engaging in conflict now think? The Democrats are extremely demoralized and stymied. They can't agree on any explanation of why so many people rejected their candidates, their policies, and their worldview, nor can they agree on how to move forward.
They certainly agree, however, that they are horrified by the results of their loss, which many see as completely apocalyptic. Everywhere I hear debates about what "we" Democrats/progressives/liberals should do. Fight as hard as we can? How? March? Boycott? Litigate? Scream? Shame and blame people on the right? "Rub their nose" in their terrible mistake? Put our heads in the sand and maybe take them out in four years? Most of us aren't in the position to litigate, so we tend to do the other things on that list. Do we ask ourselves what the result is likely to be? Most of us do not. We are angry, and we want the world to know it. And we want them to know how wrong they are so they will come back to our side with their heads hanging low. Or we are so afraid that we run away — to another country (that may well have similar problems) or by turning off the news and pretending it doesn't exist.
Meanwhile, I read that many on the right are riding high and gloating. They want to "make the libs cry" just as much as their hero, Donald Trump does. They see his victory as their victory, and all the havoc he is wrecking as their havoc. The government never worked for them, so why not "burn it down?" It is their way of getting revenge on all the years of shame and disrespect they felt were heaped on them from the left. But is that high going to last? Is Trump really going to be able to "make America great again" as he has promised?
If we understand anything about the way governments and countries work or don't work, it seems very unlikely. It is much easier to break things than to build things. Trump — and Musk — are clearly excellent at breaking things. Do they have a plan for building smaller, more efficient, replacement bureaucracies that really work and really do what needs to be done? Do they really think bureaucracies aren't necessary for the health, indeed, the survival, of a country as big and complex and diverse as the United States? Do they really think that there aren't common threats require common action to defend against? We haven't seen any indication that they have any plans for replacing the existing governmental structure with something better. Perhaps their plans are in Project 2025, which, we will admit, we haven't read. We hope they are! But for now, breaking things to the maximum extent possible seems to be all there is to their theory of change. That can't lead to long term security, stability, or "greatness." Great things aren't broken things.
So after the Trump's followers begin to see that his approach isn't working out for them as well as they hoped, and once the left figures out that screaming and crying and blaming (or moaning and groaning, complaining or ignoring) isn't working out for them very well either — there will be a time when people on the left and the right come to the realization that we need a better way forward. And that way has to be something we build together. This, we think, is the coming opportunity that should be the focus of those looking for ways to support democratic institutions and escape our current predicament.
Now, back to our 1990 friends' fears that "conflict resolution" meant giving up things to "bad guys." Indeed, compromise requires we give up on some of the things that we wanted. We mustn't forget that this also makes it possible for us to get other things that we want (that we otherwise wouldn't get) in return. This is the very essence of democracy.
But conflict resolution practitioners also make a distinction between compromise and collaboration. In compromise you assume it is a win-lose or "zero-sum" game, and everyone has to give up something to get something. Collaboration assumes that resources are not necessarily finite, and it might be possible to get most or all of what you want or need without giving up anything essential because you work together with the other side(s) to "enlarge the pie." Few people that I know of are thinking this way in terms of American politics right now. It is all being framed — and even more so all the time — as zero-sum. Either Donald Trump gets everything he wants, or the Dems "destroy him" and get the power to impose everything they want on everyone else. Few people seem to be looking for an in-between place that gives most people most of what they want or need.
We submit that we would all be better off if we stopped naming, blaming, and shaming the other side, and looked at the underlying interests that we all share. We all want security for ourselves and our families. We all want to be respected. We want our identities (be they racial, gender, religious, professional or otherwise) to be accepted, even honored. These are fundamental human needs. Human needs theorists (such as John Burton, Chris Mitchell, and Jay Rothman) have for years argued that, when their human needs are unmet, people will fight for as long and as hard as it takes to attain hose needs. So instead of driving polarization further, instead of making the left-right conflict even more intractable, wouldn't it be better to try to meet everyone's fundamental needs, and then reap the benefits of being able to work together to solve our many real pressing problems? Back in the 1990s, we developed the concept of constructive confrontation, which called for the application of fundamental conflict resolution ideas to advocacy, in addition to attempts to mediate conflicts. We argued that by doing so, advocates could be much more effective. We're glad to see Zach applying similar ideas to our current crisis — they are very badly needed!
Lead photo credit: Photo by Geoff Livingston obtained from https://www.flickr.com/
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