Newsletter #481 — August 16, 2026

by Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess

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Highlighted Links

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

• Social / Economic Complexity
  America Is Atomizing — A really insightful story that explains the limitations of the hyper-polarization narrative and the importance of recognizing that social fragmentation has torn our society into a vast array of much smaller groups.
• Social / Economic Complexity
  Who Are the Good Guys and the Bad Guys? I’m No Longer Sure. — Reflections on the plight of the politically homeless and thoughts about how one deals with a world in which one lacks strong political allies.
• US Politics
  Are the Democrats going to save us this time? — An especially thorough update on the status of the Democratic Party and its prospects of placing limits on the excesses of the Trump administration following this fall's elections.
• Saving Democracy
  Liberals Are Now Fighting a Two-Front War — An argument that defenders of liberal democracy now have to come to terms with the fact that Donald Trump and his political movement are not the only challenges that they face.
• Israel, Hamas, Iran, and Related Wars
  The Iran war outcome is even worse than most realise — An honest military assessment of where things now stand with the probable outcome of the Iranian war -- a reality in which we're all going to have to live.
• Israel, Hamas, Iran, and Related Wars
  The Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary DNA (featuring. Haviv Rettig Gur) — Key to understanding any conflict (and preventing or at least resolving any war) is understanding how the other side thinks. This podcast explains how so many in the West have gotten so much so wrong.
• Israel, Hamas, Iran, and Related Wars
  How the U.S. Squandered Its Strategic Advantage — More insight into the devastating impact that the Iran war has had on the United States' strategic position and the likely consequences of these changes.
• Social / Economic Complexity
  We’re all Machiavellians now — A story about the long shadow cast by Machiavelli's insights into the harsh realities of human nature and our political system.
• US Politics
  Republicans Are About to Repeat the Democrats’ Biggest Mistake — An update on the ways in which those on the right are developing their own brand of divisive identity group focused politics.
• Interstate War
  See the Battlefield Innovations Reshaping the Russia-Ukraine War — An update on some of new weapons that are emerging from Ukraine's desperate struggle for national survival (and the arms race surrounding that struggle.)
• Interstate War
  Why We Should Fight — From Foreign Affairs, a primer on what the US has learned about when to and how to fight wars -- insights that have, unfortunately, largely been forgotten.
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  Challenges in Navigating the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of American History. — A  report on a compromise-oriented history curriculum that is based on an honest effort to respond to the interests and concerns of those on both the left and the right.

Colleague Activities

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

• Monitoring and Evaluation
  Measuring What Truly Matters — Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. The Four Directions Dashboard helps organizations move beyond compliance-driven measurement and toward learning, accountability, and transformation.
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  Potentialism: An Expansion Pack for Liberalism — Daniel Yudkin explores liberalism's and potentialism's assumptions about rights and responsibilities.
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  The Collective Imagination Practices Toolkit — Tools from Collective Imagination practitioners around the world, for anyone who wants to build the capacity to explore and learn ways of creating better, more hopeful futures, together.
• Artificial Intelligence
  Can AI Help Us Find the Books That Bridge Political Divides? — A story about how artificial intelligence can contribute to the search for constructive narratives that can help bring our society together.
• Constructive Communication
  Lorelei Kelly talks about Local Impact Hearings — A short Facebook post about how Local Impact Hearings bring "the power of listening and memory back into the hands of "We the People."
• Civil Society
  What America250 Revealed About Civic Identities That Last — America's 250th anniversary should have been a rare opportunity to create a unifying national moment. It wasn't. This article explains why.
• Civil Society
  Yordanos Eyoel of Keseb on Democracy Entrepreneurship — Yordanos Eyoel is the Founder and CEO of Keseb, a nonprofit helping to build a transnational civil society ecosystem that advances inclusive and resilient democracies. She joins host Daniel Stid on The Art of Association podcast.
• US Politics
  11 Facts That Will Change How You See US Politics — The Builders share eleven facts that scramble the usual narrative and might just change how you see your country — and the neighbors who call it home.
• Artificial Intelligence
  The AI for Good Summit and America’s AI Sovereignty Problem — Research Analyst Giulia Neaher reflects on her experience at the AI for Good Summit and highlights some key takeaways for global AI governance discourse.
• Constructive Communication
  ‘Debate me!’ doesn’t work. Here are better ways to disagree – and maybe change minds — Debate is broken as a tool to inform, explore ideas and persuade an audience. It’s time to find another way. One good one: sharing stories.
• Peacebuilding
  Dead Men Walking Podcast: Comprehensive Peace Agreements — Once considered the gold standard of international peacemaking, the episode explores the viability of peace agreements and asks whether contemporary conflict realities and trends require a different type of ambition and approach.
• De-Escalation Strategies
  From Belfast to America: Learning to Prevent Political Violence and Heal Division — The Carter Center published a video exploring what the Troubles -- one of the world's most protracted conflicts -- teaches us about the state of American democracy.
• Saving Democracy
  Reclaiming Citizen Power in an Age of Broken Politics — How practical, tech-driven tools can help citizens flip broken incentives, bypass outrage, and hold legislators accountable to their districts.
• Immigration
  A New Standard for Ethical Immigration Reporting — Ethical immigration reporting is essential for helping audiences understand the immigrant experience and making these communities feel heard. Here are ideas on how to do that.
• Artificial Intelligence
  Does AI Detection Make Things Better When It’s This Flawed? — David Beckemeyer discovered that Substack's AI detector couldn't tell the difference between human and AI-generated content. So is it useful? Seems not!
• Constructive Communication
  How to Be a Pebble in Someone’s Shoe — The paradox of persuasion, explained by two American cousins, who despite being on opposite sides politically, actually like each other!
• Media Reform
  Re-blurring the lines between journalism and civic life — A Q&A with journalist, network-builder, and civic strategist, Darryl Holliday
• Communication Complexity
  When the Bots Show Up to the Wrong Fight — A video about an incident in 2011 (when Obama was President) about the role played by bots in attempts to influence public perceptions about the Occupy movement.
• Saving Democracy
  Congress Has an Age Floor and No Ceiling. That's Backwards for Gen Z. — Congress's age problem is not a string of individual judgment calls. It is a structural feature of the Constitution itself, and it is quietly reshaping who gets represented in American government.
• De-Escalation Strategies
  “I’m a Conservative Who Got in a Blowout Fight With My Liberal Future Father-in-Law. Now I’m Wondering if the Marriage Will Work” — Every wedding in history has been two clans of oddballs and hotheads and people who vote differently learning, slowly and imperfectly, to sit at one table.
• Civil Society
  Reclaiming Citizen Power: How Tech & AI Can Fix Broken Congress Incentives — A discussion of how practical, tech-driven tools can flip broken political incentives and force representatives to answer to their districts.

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.)

• Saving Democracy
  The Case for a Liberalism That Dares Again — An important reminder that liberalism has been able to defeat some of history's most brutal authoritarian regimes (and an argument that, with creativity and determination, it can do so again).
• Saving Democracy
  What Locke Knew About Elites — An exploration of the complex philosophical relationship between popular, democratic, self-government and those at the top of the social hierarchy.
• Education
  Universities Need Reform. It Shouldn’t Matter Who’s Telling Them. — In the context of Trump administration efforts to promote higher education reform, an argument that many of the Administration's goals are valid and ought to be pursued.
• US Politics
  Has America Already Undergone a Soft Breakup? — An update on the complex and destructive dynamics that are leading the United States through social estrangement to something approaching a true divorce.
• Artificial Intelligence
  The unexpected issue dividing parties and midterms candidates — An especially perceptive and detailed analysis of the rapid emergence of bipartisan opposition to the new data centers and AI more generally.
• Progressive Left / Socialism
  DSA socialism is Peter Pan politics for sandbox revolutionaries — From George Will. a snarky, funny, but also quite insightful critique of Democratic Socialism.
• Israel, Hamas, Iran, and Related Wars
  What Is the Flynn Network? — With respect to the activities of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, an investigative report on one instance in which foreign powers are seeking to advance their interests by contributing to the United States' political divisions.
• Interstate War
  How the Greenland standoff pushed Europe to prep for war with the U.S. — A story about just how much more precarious the global security situation has become. NATO allies are now preparing for war against one another!
• Suppressing Opponents
  Conservatives spent heavily in key Democratic primaries, filings show — A small window into a much bigger problem -- political parties that promote extremists on the other side in the often mistaken belief that they'll be easier to beat.
• Education
  College Has a Political Problem, but It’s Not Woke Brainwashing — An analysis of the way in which politics threatens higher education -- an analysis that goes beyond simplistic partisan claims.
• Corruption
  The Watchdogs Are Barking Themselves Hoarse — For an America that has become too exhausted by stories of corruption to bother listening -- an important update on just how bad things have become.
• Artificial Intelligence
  The 4 Bits of Jargon That Will Help Determine Whether the Market Will Crash — An especially clear and concise primer on four things that we all need to understand before we can begin to forecast technology's impact on our lives.
• Saving Democracy
  Liberalism Is the Underdog Now, and it's Time to Act Like It — A perceptive observation with important tactical implications -- yesterday's challengers of the power elite have now become the power elite (and vice versa).
• Israel, Hamas, Iran, and Related Wars
  How the Axis of Resistance Recovered — An explanation of why Iranian proxy forces surprisingly still constitute a significant threat (despite their devastating battlefield losses).
• Family / Gender / LBGTQ+
  The Betrayals of Modern Feminism — An exploration of the contradictions between the original goals of the feminist movement and the goals of its modern day counterpart.
• The Hyper-Polarization Threat
  In 25-Country Survey, Americans Especially Likely To View Fellow Citizens as Morally Bad — Yet another statistic highlighting the depth and seriousness of the United States' hyperpolarization problem. We don't just disagree, we think our fellow citizens are evil.
• Interstate War
  How Ukrainians Are Surviving — A report on what life during the war is really like in Ukraine (and a powerful reminder that avoiding such horrors should be our top priority).
• Israel, Hamas, Iran, and Related Wars
  How Hamas’ Attack on Israel Is Transforming American Politics — A lengthy and heavily documented report on what is likely to be the decisive battlefield in the war between Iran and Israel -- US politics.
• Progressive Left / Socialism
  How Colleges Produce Socialists — An interesting hypothesis: young college graduates are more supportive of socialism because today's college experience incorporates so much of the socialist vision (lots of free goods and services paid for in ways that don't entail immediate costs.)
• Progressive Left / Socialism
  Socialism Is the Wrong Answer, but the Questions Are Real — Amid all of the anxiety about the Democratic Socialism's Program of action, a reminder (from The Wall Street Journal) that the problems the socialist movement seeks to address are real and demand attention.
• Artificial Intelligence
  I’m Begging You: Never Write With A.I. — An exploration of the critical role that writing plays in human thought and social relations. Plus, thoughts about what happens should we make the mistake of outsourcing this critical part of our humanity to machines.

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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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