Newsletter #402 — November 22, 2025

by Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess

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Highlighted Links

A few suggestions about links that we think are especially interesting.

• Authoritarianism
  Trump Has Taken Only Months to Accomplish the Level of Authoritarian Consolidation That Took Orbán and Modi Years — A thoughtful, and only a little bit hopeful, comparison of the ways in which Trump, Modi, Orbán have tried to consolidate power.
• Education
  The Screen That Ate Your Child’s Education — Surprising news that smart phones aren't the only screen-based way in which addictive Internet content can undermine your child's education.
• Political Dysfunction
  The Politics of Anarchy — An explanation of the ways in which authoritarian wannabes cultivate and then exploit chaos and dysfunction.
• Social / Economic Complexity
  The Ingratitude of the Well-Fed — We live in a time when it is fashionable, almost obligatory, to complain about the "system's" many failures. Seldom are these criticisms matched with genuine gratitude for the wonders that that system produces.
• Interstate War
  The future of war is the future of society — The sad fact is that all peace agreements occur within the context of power balance based on physical force. This article explains how those power balances are changing.
• Saving Democracy
  Redistricting Is Ruining Democracy — An update on the ways in which the partisan motivations behind redistricting and gerrymandering are robbing us of our chance to cast meaningful votes.
• Immigration
  ‘The System Is Meant to Break You’: What ICE Is Doing to People Here Legally — A ghastly and outrageous description of what ICE is doing to US citizens (and those suspected of being in the US illegally) — institutionalized sadism and cruelty.
• Saving Democracy
  Public norms have been warped, no doubt. Is the damage permanent? — An exploration of whether contemporary politics is better described as a pendulum or as a ratchet.

Reader Suggested Links

Highlighting links suggested by our readers. Please send us links to things that you find useful.

• Constructive Communication
  Defuse political tension in your family with one simple question — Thoughts about better ways of handling sometimes difficult holiday conversations based on cultivating the seldom recognized aspect of well-being — curiosity.
• Rule of Law
  Letters from an American -- Unlawful Orders — A good summary of the "sedition" story — one that reveals how close we are to a crisis in which the military has to decide what orders are lawful and, potentially, whose orders to follow.
• Disinformation
  How to Confront Highbrow Misinformation — For those who thought that only the poor and less educated could fall victim to disinformation and sophisticated propaganda, an explanation of how the so-called intelligentsia is succumbing as well.
• US Politics
  The Great Unraveling — News that the monolithic Trump machine may be falling victim to the same divisions that are tearing apart other aspects of society.
• Disinformation
  BBC Bias Laid Bare — In the context of the BBC scandal, a look at how both the media and political figures have been altering objective evidence to better support their image of underlying truth.
• Civil Society
  Connection Grift — Expert gurus, tech companies, political saviors, and national nonprofits threaten to capture our generational moment of civic renewal. But we can push back to channel this connection craze for good.
• Networking
  The Shadow Side of Collaboration — What happens when the strengths that make networks thrive also make them fragile and vulnerable — and what to do about it.
• Israel / Hamas War
  How The New York Times Constructs False Narratives: From Nazi Germany to Gaza’s “Starving” Boy — A detailed look at the source of some of the biggest misunderstandings about the war in Gaza.
• Artificial Intelligence
  Artificial Barriers to Intelligence — News that AI has mastered another aspect of human intelligence -- the ability to evade tough questions.

Colleague Activities

Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.

• Peacebuilding
  Peacebuilding Starts at Home Website — Chip Hauss's book Peacebuilding Starts at Home has just come out. This is the website with resources that accompany that: chapter overviews, a podcast summary, study and a reading group guide.
• Superpower Conflict
  The big tent strategy isn’t working — Scott Warren's contribution to a series of articles discussing whether the "big tent" strategy for reversing democratic backsliding is working or not.
• Superpower Conflict
  The big tent is working — Julia Roig's contribution to a discussion about whether the "big tent" strategy is the best way to protect democracy.
• Superpower Conflict
  President's Letter: How Do We Build a Super-Majority for Democracy? “Bigger We” Organizing Is a Key Strategy — How do we build a supermajority in this country for multi-racial democracy? What will it take for people who disagree vehemently on a variety of issues to defend democratic processes and fundamental rights, like the right to protest?
• Superpower Conflict
  A Bigger We — A strategy to foster the belonging, bridging and building of collective agency needed to revitalize our democracy from the Freedom Together Foundation.
• Theories of Change
  Bigger We Organizing: A strategy to revitalize our democracy — The Bigger We report explores six elements of Bigger We organizing — a strategy for building belonging, bridging, and collective agency in our democracy.
• Artificial Intelligence
  Harnessing AI While Supporting Democracy — From deepfakes and black-box algorithms to new tools to improve government effectiveness and civic engagement, AI is already reshaping democracies. We must build in guardrails to protect the public.
• Civil Society
  Breaking Into Civic Tech — An extensive listing of resources for people who want to become involved in "Civic Tech."
• Civil Society
  Civic Education Roundup: Academic freedom under threat, from without and within, and students vote. — A great roundup of what’s happening in civic education and in higher ed,
• Theories of Change
  What social movements can learn from the ‘innovator’s dilemma’ — An unconventional observation that social movements have to find better ways of overcoming the "innovator's dilemma" and how insights from the business community can help.
• Constructively Addressing Complex Issues
  Why So Many People Feel Shut Out of Science — People on both the left and right can be skeptical of experts when they feel unheard or dismissed.
• Psychological Complexity
  Lura Forcum on the Temporary Pleasure of Outrage”  — Wilk Wilkinson and Lura Forcum  unpack one of the most destructive forces in modern politics: political schadenfreude -- the pleasure we take in seeing our rivals upset, angry, or defeated.
• Civil Society
  Addressing the Decline of Civility in Public Discourse — Across the country, residents and leaders alike are struggling with rising incivility, intimidating behaviors and, in some cases, violent behavior towards those in public offices. The National League of Cities has suggestions.

• Authoritarianism
  Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline — A report from former U.S. Intelligence Community officers with analytic responsibilities, showing that the U.S. is on a trajectory toward "competitive authoritarianism."

   

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.)

• The Hyper-Polarization Threat
  The Red Flags Are Everywhere. — From the perspective of a family therapist, an explanation of how, as a society, we are falling victim to the same dynamics that tear families apart.
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  The Left’s 21st Century Project Has Failed — Yet another contribution to the debate over why the left has failed to bend the arc of history in its preferred direction.
• Class Inequity
  Why Ford Can’t Find Mechanics — Another reason to think that we've gone too far in telling young people that college and a white-collar job is the only path to a respectable future. We have an oversupply of educated elites and a shortage of skilled blue-collar workers.
• Israel / Hamas War
  Palestinian identity politics makes peace with Israel impossible. — One of the many reasons why recognizing a Palestinian state is easy, but building a functional state that lives in peace with its neighbors is hard.
• Social / Economic Complexity
  ‘Affordability’ Costs a Bundle — For a time when political competition seems to have resulted in a race to see who can make the most extravagant promises -- a reminder that money is real and not unlimited.
• Superpower Conflict
  What If ‘America First’ Appears to Work? — Another genuinely scary possibility that we ought to seriously consider — the notion that Trump's bullying foreign policy might actually give him the power he covets.
• Interstate War
  The trafficking networks sustaining Russia’s war of attrition — This Russia's efforts to prosecute the war in Ukraine have reached another new low--the use of trafficked individuals (modern-day slaves) to fight the war.
• Social / Economic Complexity
  How Crypto Could Trigger the Next Financial Crisis — For those who like thinking about economic bubbles, an overview of yet another one.
• Education
  Higher Ed Needs Receivership, Not Reform — For those who can understand why anyone would be supporting Donald Trump's assault on higher education, an explanation of why there are reasonable people who think that radical change is needed.
• Israel / Hamas War
  The West's Great Betrayal: How Israel Became the Canary in Democracy's Coal Mine — A detailed account of the complex relationship between blood libels, propaganda, and the explosion of anti-Semitism — an explosion that also tells us much about the decline of Western democracies.
• Hate Mongering
  Nick Fuentes’ Plan to Mobilize the Groypers. — An update on the plans of a dark new force in US politics — a force that, for most of us, has only recently become visible.
• Communication Complexity
  How the Internet Made the Far-Right — Marshall McLuhan famously said that "the medium is the message." This article looks at how the medium of Internet-based social media has been instrumental in building the far right's message.
• Race / Anti-Racism
  What Does ‘White Guilt’ Mean in 2025? — A doubtless controversial, but still thought-provoking, essay from a right-leaning perspective that summarizes Shelby Steele's challenge to the civil rights efforts of the last half-century.
• Interstate War
  The Brains Behind Ukraine’s Pink Flamingo Cruise Missile — An inspiring and heartbreaking story about what war does to a society -- it turns "artsy" people into designers of sophisticated weapons.

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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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