Newsletter #388 — September 30, 2025

After a welcome and introduction by Braver Angels' CEO Maury Giles, there were three panels, each with a moderator and three speakers (representing twelve different organizations). The first panel examined how we got to where we are now, and what Charlie Kirk's killing meant to the first group of speakers.  The second panel examined what the participating organizations can do to help their constituents and the wider society deal with this event and its aftermath in a constructive way.  And the third panel talked about a vision for the future. (The longer article we posted describes key ideas from Maury's introduction and each of the three panels in order. In this newsletter, we pull out cross-cutting themes from the entire event.)

Focusing on Contribution, Not Blame

I chuckled at the quote Jonathan Stray put at the beginning of his post "Why Build Bridges when Democracy is Burning?" about the same event. He quoted progressive writer Micah Sifry who commented on his Substack about the Braver Angels convening:

I listened carefully to all the speakers, hoping to hear someone say something about the rising danger of authoritarianism under Trump. But everyone stayed in their imaginary middle... No one mentioned the many ways the Trump administration has broken the norms of democratic governance.

No they didn't. And no one mentioned, either, the many things that Joe Biden and the Democrats did between 2020 and 2025 to force the progressive agenda on an unconvinced and unwanting public. And, no one talked about who was worse or who was a greater threat to democracy. 

I haven't asked the speakers "why" they avoided those topics, but knowing about conflict dynamics, I am guessing that all the respondents knew that pointing fingers and placing blame on the other side is seldom, if ever, an effective way to get them to change their behavior.  It is much more likely to get them to dig in and do more of the same.  So instead of talking about "blame," several panelists talked about "contribution" — recognizing and owning up to what each side contributed to the current situation. (An example is how leaders on both the right and the left framed the other side as an "existential threat," suggesting that democracy, or even America "as we know it" would be destroyed if the other side came into (or stayed in) power. Such statements invite alienated, violence-prone individuals to try to "make a difference" by trying to kill leaders of what they see as the "evil side." 

Panelist Keith Allred – from the National Institute for Civil Discourse & CommonSense American observed:

The vast majority of us recognize everybody's contributed [to this escalation]. ...Those of us more in the middle, and moderates, have been too quiet. We all have a role in this, ... When conflicts turn around, it's when people stop just pointing the finger at the other side, and they start to point the finger at their own side and say, "So, what can I do?" [We might add the word "differently" after this quote.]

Violence is Never Acceptable; It is Never "The Answer"

Host, Braver Angels' CEO Maury Giles, made this core idea very clear in his opening statement, and it was echoed by several other speakers later in the evening.

We can assign blame, excuse violence as something maybe someone had coming or somehow is acceptable. And we can really feed and fuel that fire. ... Or we can take our own responsibility for this moment to act, instead of react, to exercise what I believe is our God-given agency. We have to choose the path we will take for ourselves and the society and the country we leave for our children. 

Alexandra Hudson of Civic-Renaissance) echoed that theme in the last panel:

[Upon reflecting on Charlie Kirk's killing, some people said] "but you have to understand where people are coming from, ... you have to understand the hurt that Charlie caused with his words." No! A life was taken and that's condemnable. Full stop. No ifs, ands, or buts, or qualifications of any kind. 

The speakers all agreed on this point (as do we), making it clear that this was both a moral/ethical stance, and also a practical one. Everyone agreed, celebrating (or even excusing) Kirk's killing would fan the flames of escalation, making future violence much more likely. We all need to unequivocally stand against violence and for free speech. We may not have liked Charlie's message, but we must strongly support his right to state that message to whomever would listen, and particularly stand against violence as an acceptable way to silence speech we don't like. 

Another way of thinking through our response to the Kirk assassination relies on one of the most important strategies for building constructive relationships in difficult circumstances — the golden rule.  Kirk was assassinated by somebody from a left-leaning perspective. Those on the left should think about how they would want the right to respond should a similarly prominent left-leaning figure be assassinated by somebody from the right. In Newsletter #256 we outlined a more detailed strategy for applying this idea to our political divisions.

We All Have A Choice

I remember being told long ago that we cannot always control what happens to us or in the world around us, but we always can choose how we respond to events.  Kristin Hansen of the Civic Health Project echoed this beautifully:

We have to decide, each of us in our own mind, in our own heart: "I want to be a bridger, not a divider." It's about deciding how we, each of us, wants to walk in the world, how we want to show up, the culture we want to create and build together. It's about deciding that I want to adopt and model the ways of being that are going to cultivate bridges of understanding and not chasms of contempt. 

So did Manu Meel, who works on college campuses with Bridge USA. He reported that the students he talked to after Kirk's killing "wanted to do something — they wanted to make something positive out of this terrible tragedy." "The great thing about America," he said, is that "we always have a choice" and that choice has not been taken away from us.  We need to "remember that dialogue and pluralism are at the center of this country." We still have a choice about whether to pursue them, or to pursue further violence instead. 

We All Have Agency

A closely related theme that came up again and again was "agency." Repeating Maury Giles quote from above:

We can take our own responsibility for this moment to act, instead of react, to exercise what I believe is our God-given agency. We have to choose the path we will take for ourselves and the society and the country we leave for our children. 

Or, as Keith Allred from the National Institute for Civil Discourse, said in Panel 2:

Where does this go from here? As Maury emphasized with agency, there's nothing predestined about where we can go from here. It could escalate further from here quite easily, or it could be a turning point where we rally together. That's on us. It's on us each individually, [and] on us as organizations to exercise that agency and make a choice that this won't define us. And so where we went at the National Institute for Civil Discourse strategically was to relaunch the Better Than This Campaign that we first launched right after the Trump assassination attempt.

Jennifer Thomas with Mormon Women for Ethical Government continued the same theme in Panel 3 on vision:

I think one of the failures that we've continually experienced is that everyday Americans expect somebody else to do the big swing. [They expect that someone else is] going gather them all in and be the person that makes it all happen for them.

 I would like to pivot and say to every single person on this call, you have so much more agency, capacity, and influence than you realize. And you have the opportunity to exponentially grow that influence. It can start by reaching out to one person and then you invite four people over for dinner and then you decide I'm going to have eight people over in my backyard and then I'm going to invite 16 people to go vote at the same time I vote. There are lots of ways to do it. ...

I would encourage everyone to really take some thoughtful time to ask yourself, what is your work to do? Every single one of us has a part to play in this. It's not going to be some big organization that's going to get us out of this. But the organizations that we've talked about on this call are going to make it a lot easier for us to do it, because they're setting up spaces already in which we can come together. So, if you're not an organizer, find a group that you can plug yourself into. And then you've got everything you need to do to make this happen. Suddenly, it's all possible. You've got agency. You know where you're going. You know who's inspiring you to go there. You've set up a group of people that you want to work with and you've figured out what your work is to do. And I know that sounds really simplistic, but that is the pathway for each of us to exercise agency, control, and to honestly make a substantive and meaningful difference in the world around us. It's possible for all of us. 

The Need for Hope

Several of the speakers also emphasized the importance of hope.  Without hope, we despair. We become fearful, depressed, and angry. And those emotions stoke the fire of vengeance, which drives escalation and polarization, and makes even more violence likely. But when we have hope, then there is reason to make the choice Kristen and Manu called for.  As Maury said in his opening statement, "The challenge in front of us is real. People are angry. People are hurt. People are anxious. People are worried. But people want to feel hope." He reiterated this theme in his closing comments: "We have the right message. We have the spirit of hope. Darkness never removes darkness. Hate never removes hate. Only light removes darkness. And only love removes hate. We need to move forward with that." 

In this context, it is important to distinguish "hope" from passive "optimism" — the belief that things will work out regardless of what one does. Anne Leslie explained the difference well in her 2023 essay "Why Hope Dies Last...and Why I Stopped Being an Optimist." in which she quoted Rebecca Solnit: 

Hope locates itself in the premise that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes — you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists adopt the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It is the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand.

These themes really resonated for us, probably because we, too, have been writing and talking about them for a long time.  But, in their effort to be upbeat, perhaps, we felt that some of the speakers made this seem easier than it is or will be.  Many speakers, for example, urged the listeners to go out and talk to people.  Heather Blakeslee from FAIR & Root Quarterly, for instance, said 

When I have conversations with people in private, they will tell me much different things about how they feel than those things that they might say in in public. And so we have to get really courageous about that and start saying what we think. I think it is a fundamental thing that we have to do that. ...  I think we have to get offline and talk to our neighbors. 

But the reasons why people are afraid to do that are real. They became even more real on September 10, when Charlie Kirk was shot dead for doing just that.  And short of that, the fear of being shunned by one's friends, or losing one's job are real, legitimate fears. We cannot ask people to speak out in isolation. We need, first, to create a culture of free speech where people are respected for sharing their views, not punished for that. 

That happens in dialogues held by these bridging organizations. But we need to take those skills, and those expectations about how to interact outside small dialogue rooms. We were struck, a few years ago, when we talked with Katie Hyten of Essential Partners.  She explained how they are moving beyond one-off dialogues, to train entire institutions in "dialogic skills" and "dialogic culture."

So what our work really focuses on now is helping shift the fabric of the DNA of our partners over time in ways that model and reflect the best ways in which they are already working. So, it's adaptable, it's scalable, and it's able to be authentic for each space that we work in. So, we want to equip people over time to hold this, not just in the separate space of dialogue, which still certainly will happen, but also to embed it within the life of that space.

So whether it's a school that is using dialogic principals in their classrooms, and all of their teachers are helping equip their students with these skills, but also teaching the curriculum in a dialogic way, or a YMCA that's embedding dialogic elements into their programming, or a library that's thinking about how to support places for community connection in their programming, or a city government that does its community meetings and community engagement differently because of their work with us, we want to embed it [dialogue] so that the system changes. Because we know that no matter what happens with this issue, regardless of what "this issue" is in your context, the next issue is just going to be right around the corner. So we want to help prepare you for that, too.

That seems to us to be a great way to work on changing our culture of communication and political action, so that it can become easier for people to speak out about what they believe. As we do this, it's important to recognize that opportunities for direct interpersonal contact across the political divide are inevitably limited. Our society is just too politically segregated. There is also limited funding available for the kinds of programs talked about in the webinar (and a great many people have trouble finding the time to participate effectively).

One strategy for overcoming these limitations focuses on learning how to make more constructive and effective use of the mass media. While the media is obviously flooded with lots of destructive, inflammatory content, it also contains a great deal of insightful, thoughtful material that offers the kind of insights similar to what one would expect to gain from the best dialogue programs. We think that we all need to get much better at finding and taking advantage of this content.  (This is something that we try to make a little easier with our weekly Links Newsletters.) 

And, while getting offline is good advice when it applies to doom scrolling of inflammatory, us-vs-them content, there is still a positive role to be played by direct, personal engagement with individuals that we know and primarily interact with online.

Another point is worth stressing. The kinds of interactions talked about in the webinar will be of little value unless we are all willing to hear some hard things, acknowledge that the other side has legitimate complaints, and honestly think about changes that our own group could make to help reduce tensions. The interactions that we have been talking about can't just be an opportunity to explain why your group is right and their group is wrong.

There was much, much more rich material in these two hours. Go to our longer description, or the full video of the event for more.

As a last, sad and worrying note. In panel two, participants were asked where they thought things would go from here and most said they didn't know. Things could get better or worse.  They seem to be getting worse. On September 24, a shooter in Dallas, Texas shot three people detailed by ICE at an ICE facility, before shooting and killing himself, and on September 28, a man drove a car into a Mormon Church near Flint, Michigan, set the church on fire, and shot at the worshipers.  At least four people were killed, eight more were wounded (one critically), and the church burned to the ground. The shooter also died in a confrontation with police.  The fears that violence is contagious seem to be playing out. Acting to stop this contagion, needless to say, is an urgent task.

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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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