Newsletter #341 — April 13, 2025
by Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess
Reader Suggested Links
Highlighting links suggested by our readers. Please send us links to things that you find useful.
- Education
The Average College Student Is Illiterate — Over the door to our university library is the inscription, "Enter Here the Timeless Fellowship of the Human Spirit." Sad news that today's students may not be able to read that. - Authoritarianism
America’s Future Is Hungary — From Anne Applebaum, an effort to help Americans better understand their own society by looking at what has been happening in Hungary. - US Politics
What Ocasio-Cortez Wants for the Democrats — From the Sanders / Ocasio-Cortez and their Fighting Oligarchy tour, a report on AOC's vision for the future, - US Politics
The beginning of the end of the Trump era — An argument that the Trump administration may have already gone too far in the pursuit of its agenda (and that that overreach may be undermining its power and creating opportunities for Democrats). - Race / Anti-Racism
Aaron Sibarium on Identity Politics under Joe Biden and Donald Trump — More food for thought as we try to understand the complex ways in which identity politics is influencing events. - Israel / Hamas War
Amid rubble of Gaza, protesters decry Hamas — As Hamas continues to suffer significant battlefield losses, a story about the brave Gazans who are trying to find a path to a post-Hamas future. - US Politics
‘Our 2028 Nominee Will Need to Come From America, Not Washington’ — A forward thinking argument that one key to escaping our current political predicament is to look outside the Washington establishment for future leaders.
Colleague Activities
Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
- Runaway Escalation
When toxic polarization becomes a civil war – and what we can do about it — International peacebuilder, mediator and scholar John Paul Lederach offers practical wisdom for resisting cycles of division and violence before it's too late. - Constructive Communication
Well, That Went Sideways! Beyond Intractability with Heidi Burgess — Heidi Burgess talks about Beyond Intractability and our work studying that and dialogue processes on a local conflict resolution podcast. - Peacebuilding
Transformation Futures — In this report, CDA, Peace Direct, and Search for Common Ground share the various transformative outcomes that they have seen through supporting transition processes over the past eight years of collaborative learning and applied research. - Saving Democracy
Path Forward: Defining The Democracy Reform Movement, Julia Roig — Julia talks about the Democracy Reform Movement on the Fulcrum's new Podcast series. - Education
Fostering Social Cohesion in Schools & Beyond — This Toolkit is a comprehensive resource designed to promote social cohesion in learning spaces within diversified communities. - Theories of Change
Getting Small to Go Big: Lessons in Interdependence — An interesting and thought-provoking article that asks us to rethink our theories of change in ways that better account for the complex interactions of the societal ecosystem. - Non-Violence
Using Our Power - Nonviolence & Noncooperation In History & Today — Horizon's Project Maria Stephan’s recent presentation to the Franciscan Action Network about how nonviolence and non-cooperation has been used in the past to resist authoritarianism, and how it can be used now. - Constructive Communication
Why talking to your enemies matters — Builders' Movement Partner Daryl Davis has single-handedly persuaded many white supremacists to renounce their racism. In 2020, Daryl went on Joe Rogan’s podcast to highlight the importance of engaging with empathy even with people we see as dangerous. - De-Escalation Strategies
An Emerging Tool in the Polarization Reduction Toolbox: A Guide to Using and Understanding Meta-Perception Correction Interventions. — Science-informed conflict management strategies, from Beyond Conflict. - Constructive Advocacy
Where Are You in the Outrage Overload Listener Journey? — David Beckemeyer invites us to reflect on where we are in our own attempt to develop a healthier relationship with media and political discourse and offers articles for helping at each stage.
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 Politics
The Democrats Are in Denial About 2024 — Another article urging Democrats to make the kinds of changes needed for it to pursue its role as an effective opposition party -- something that a functioning two-party democracy desperately needs. - US Politics
What I Saw at the MAGA Revolution — The report on one of today's most important conflicts -- the conflict between Republicans who genuinely want to build a better society and those who just seek retribution against the left. - Race / Anti-Racism
Believe It Or Not, There Are Interesting And Non-Evil Reasons Why Your Political Enemies Disagree About Victimhood And Immediately Leaping To The Least Charitable Interpretation Is Stupid — Any attempt, by an opponent of DEI programs, to better explain why reasonable people might really have a legitimate reasons for concern and opposition. - Constructively Addressing Complex Issues
Six-Chart Sunday – Unbalanced — Another great collection of eye-opening statistics and graphs that illuminate important and hard-to-see aspects of our contemporary world. - Superpower Conflict
How a New Axis Called CRINK Is Working Against America — An update on the emergence of CRINK -- the other side of the increasingly hyper-polarized global world order. - US Politics
Republicans should welcome Democrats’ turn to ‘abundance’ — More reason to hope that it might be possible to craft a new and much more broadly accepted political movement built around "abundance" -- an effort to eliminate chronic shortages in almost everything. - Hate Mongering
The Gleeful Cruelty of the White House X Account — An exploration of what the White House' X account can tell us about the speed with which political dehumanization taboos are falling. - US Politics
How to beat back Trump’s divide & conquer strategy — In the context of the Trump administration, an essay on strategies for reducing the effectiveness of "divide and conquer" attacks. - De-Escalation Strategies
Is It Possible to Be Magnanimous in Victory? — An essay on one of the most important and most neglected features of a successful democracy -- the willingness of democracy's winners to respect the interests of its losers. - Disinformation
The misinformation crisis isn’t about truth, it’s about trust — A perceptive argument that the key to combating the misinformation / disinformation crisis is for information sources to focus on acting in ways that are truly worthy of the public's trust. - US Politics
Tariffs only "work" if they make prices higher — An essay exploring the disconnect between what tariffs are likely to do and how they are being sold to Trump supporters and the American people. - Disinformation
Why censorship is making us all dumber — An essay highlighting the dangers of believing that your side possesses the one true truth and that all other views are wrong and should be suppressed. - Superpower Conflict
Read This if You’re on Trump’s National Security Team — A summary of the core principles that those in national security roles need to follow if they are going to be able to effectively defend the nation from the many genuine threats that do exist. - Education
Colleges Have to Be Much More Honest With Themselves — Amid Trump's all-out effort to transform higher education, a call for our nation's universities to take a hard look at why so much of the general public has turned against them.
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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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