Newsletter #405 — December 3, 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
  The Biggest Tent — From a leading expert on the authoritarian threat, Anne Appelbaum, an explanation of why it is so important that we build the largest pro-democracy coalition possible.
• Israel / Hamas War
  Strategic and military analysis of Phase II of the Gaza ceasefire: Part One — A rare look at the vast gulf that exists between superficial, but nice-sounding, peace plans and the gigantic list of obstacles that those plans have to overcome in order to be successful.
• Saving Democracy
  The Ideal That Underlies the Declaration of Independence — For those looking for an organizational principal capable of reuniting are divided society, an argument for rediscovering the Declaration of Independence and the principle of common ground.
• Social / Economic Complexity
  No historical event benefited the world more than the Revolutionary War — The supportive review of Ken Burns' new documentary on the Revolutionary War — a documentary that highlights its multifaceted and surprising ugliness as well as its positive effects on world history.
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  How to Replace Christian Nationalism — An exploration of the dramatic changes now underway in the United States' many Christian communities and thoughts about those that are helpful and those that are not.
• Artificial Intelligence
  This Is No Way to Rule a Country — A surprising and worrying report about efforts to solve our dysfunctional politics by turning the responsibilities of governance over the AI systems.
• Artificial Intelligence
  How to Cheat at Conversation — Yet another surprising and scary story about a way in which AI is robbing us of our humanity.

Reader Suggested Links

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

• Developing a Unifying Vision
  America’s Formula for Greatness Is Under Threat — From Nicholas Kristof, thoughts about three big things that made America great--things that we are in danger of losing.
• Psychological Complexity
  Heterodox Orthodoxy — A reminder that those challenging prevailing orthodoxies have an obligation to consider their criticisms seriously and to offer more positive alternatives.
• US Politics
  No, Trump 2.0. Is Not Normal Constitutional Evolution — An argument against thinking about the Trump Administration as offering just another flavor of the hardball politics that has always characterized US democracy.
• Israel / Hamas War
  Hamas’s Popularity Rises in Gaza, Complicating Trump Plan to Disarm Militants — President Trump's peace plan for Gaza (and Israeli hopes for decisive victory) all hinge on somehow being able to disarm Hamas and demilitarize Gaza. This poll makes clear just how hard that is going to be.
• US Politics
  Why Democrats keep flailing — Another contribution to the great debate over why, despite Donald Trump's provocations, Democrats are having such trouble mobilizing support. This one focuses on governmental ineffectiveness.
• Authoritarianism
  Why Trump Gets Away With It — The comparative look at President Trump's often scandalous behavior and the Watergate scandal that ended Richard Nixon's Presidency.
• Freedom of Speech 
  Chaos at Berkeley: Free Speech Under Siege — At UC Berkeley, the home of the Free Speech Movement from the 1960s, disturbing opposition to a panel discussion held in honor of the assassinated Charlie Kirk.

Colleague Activities

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

• Constructive Communication
  What Do We Mean By ‘Dialogue’? — In this op-ed, Peter Coleman considers what distinguishes meaningful dialogue from attention-grabbing, polarizing debate.
• Civil Society
  A More Independent and Pluralistic Civil Society Is Possible — American Enterprise Institute fellow Daniel Stid thinks 2026 will bring growth in the civic engagement space. But it will not be easy to turn our civic space around.
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  Virtue: Happiness with Integrity — We often think of happiness as a feeling — but deeper happiness depends on how we live. When our actions match our values, we experience inner harmony. When they don’t, we feel tension.
• De-Escalation Strategies
  Outrage Science Bites — David Beckemeyer of Outrage Overload has joined the NAPodPoMo challenge and is posting a short podcast a day for 30 days on bridging: what it is, how to do it, and why. Check them out!
• Civil Society
  The Civic Bargain — A Substack for a growing movement of citizens who want to learn about and take charge of rebuilding our democratic future.
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  How Do We Find the Balance Between Accountability and Grace? — Every healthy society needs both accountability and grace, but when one outweighs the other, things start to break.
• Leadership
  Nonprofit Leadership as a Vocation — Nonprofit leaders must shoulder a heavy burden of responsibility in our tumultuous age. How can they avoid the pitfalls along their path?
• Constructive Communication
  A Different Kind of Power: How Authentic Relational Conversations Lay the Groundwork for Democratic Renewal — The United Vision Project (UVP) shows that rural communities are critically important to the process of creating an inclusive, multi-racial democracy the likes of which has never before existed in the United States.
• Saving Democracy
  Democracy as Infrastructure — Stop thinking of democracy as the system that failed you. Start thinking of it as the infrastructure that allows you to fight for something better.
• Saving Democracy
  Democracy 2076: Pro-Democracy Political Coalitions for 2076. — A report about political realignments, identifying 17 new axes of political polarization that transcend the traditional left-right divide.
• Civil Society
  Part 1: From Critical Theory to Civic Renewal — How one former progressive planned to move from division to unity.
• Bridge Building
  Can bridge building save democracy? With Miriam Juan-Torres González — A discussion about the evolution of political polarisation since 2016, the rise of authoritarian populism and strategies for building bridges and defending democracy in turbulent times. 

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.)

• Trust / Trust Earning
  Mapped: Where People Trust Each Other Most, by Country — An international comparative assessment of levels of social trust that raises as many questions as it answers.
• Artificial Intelligence
  Niall Ferguson: The AI Boom Is a House of Cards — An overview of the complex deals that may be transforming the race to develop AI technologies into an unsustainable economic bubble that threatens the global economy.
• Artificial Intelligence
  When AI Hype Meets AI Reality: A Reckoning in 6 Charts — Compelling charts explaining the magnitude of the AI boom--something that is swallowing a gigantic share of the resources available for capital and infrastructure investment.
• Education
  The College Kids Who Can’t Do Basic Math  — More evidence that our efforts to prevent students from failing are leading to a world in which far too few succeed in mastering the basic intellectual building blocks.
• Psychological Complexity
  Your Personality Traits Are Bets About How the World Works — Reflections on the evolution of personality traits and the role that they play in helping us navigate a dangerous world.
• US Politics
  This rising House Democrat is a voice for the angry middle — A profile of Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat who is exploring one strategy for building a centrist, more broadly appealing, political movement.
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  What Is Post-Liberalism, Anyway? — An update on the ways in which stereotypical beliefs about what others think are being undermined by rapid changes in political philosophy.
• Psychological Complexity
  Attention Is Power — An analysis of what free speech means in a smart phone/social media environment in which complex algorithms favor some speech at the expense of other speech.
• Social / Economic Complexity
  Six-Chart Sunday – Headwinds — Another reminder that we should not take relatively benign economic circumstances for granted.
• Psychological Complexity
  Ethical Diversity — An insightful analysis of the surprising and often hypocritical ways in which our ethical beliefs turn into self-serving excuses.
• Disinformation
  The acceleration of misrepresentation — For those who already understand the dangers of misrepresentation and disinformation, an explanation about how these dynamics reinforce and amplify one another.
• Race / Anti-Racism
  The deepest South--Slavery in Latin America, on a huge scale, was different from that in the United States. Why don’t we know this history? — For those who want to understand more about the grotesque institution of slavery, a surprising comparative analysis of slavery in the Western Hemisphere.
• Left / Right Conflict
  The Left’s New Moralism Will Backfire — A thought-provoking essay that explores the complex implications of the left's shift from moral relativism to moral clarity.

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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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