Newsletter #485 — August 31, 2026

by Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess

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Highlighted Links

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

• Israel, Hamas, Iran, and Related Wars
  The Suicide of a Hegemon — The war in Iran depleted weapons important to American global power projection. Trump 2.0 shows how he is squandering the alliances needed to sustain it.
• Israel, Hamas, Iran, and Related Wars
  See How the World Has Changed Since the Start of the Iran War — A great series of graphics (and accompanying text) that brings us up to date on the far-reaching and often unrecognized implications of the United States' war against Iran.
• Education
  Forget Yourself — From University of Austin (Texas), President Carlos Carvalho’s 2026 Convocation Address and a vision for higher education worth considering.
• Israel, Hamas, Iran, and Related Wars
  The Gaza War Everyone Thinks They Understand — One of the most documented wars in history may also be one of the most misunderstood. This essay explores some of many dynamics that are distorting public perceptions of the conflict.
• Suppressing Opponents
  Hook and Squeeze — A report on an extensive investigation into the hidden and very dark side of US politics (and the ways in which bad-faith actors are attempting to manipulate both individuals and the larger system).
• Social / Economic Complexity
  Six-Chart Sunday – Tailwinds Are Real. Will They Last? — Amid all of the gloom and doom and predictions of imminent economic catastrophe, hopeful news that there are important positive trends that point to a better future.
• Israel, Hamas, Iran, and Related Wars
  Trump is making the Iranian people pay for his failed war — Trump promised Iranians that help was coming. Tragically his strategy has evolved into an effort to impoverish the Iranian people in hopes that their rulers well eventually surrender.
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  Ordinary Abundance — A thought-provoking essay that asks us to reflect on our exceptional good fortune by walking through the places in which we live and reflecting on the things that we have that earlier generations would have regarded as miraculous.
• Saving Democracy
  America Has an Uncontested Elections Problem — As U.S. Democracy is currently structured, roughly 70% of all elections are uncontested -- a fact that convinces many that they lack a meaningful voice.
• Social / Economic Complexity
  What if our biggest problems aren’t economic? — A long and especially well documented essay that explores the social factors that are critical to the success of a society and its economy.
• Class Inequity
  Is This a New Era of Class Warfare? — An update on instances in which the class tensions that are at the heart of our hyper-polarized politics cross the line into outright acts of violence.
• Interstate War
  Has World War III Already Started? — An excellent contribution to the series of articles that asks us to pay more attention to the expanding scope of the world's most violent conflicts and the possibility that they could engulf the planet in a global conflagration.
• Israel, Hamas, Iran, and Related Wars
  The Hatred That Broke American Politics — A comparison of the United States' robust efforts to address the scourge of racism and its wholly inadequate efforts to address the problem of antisemitism.
• Saving Democracy
  Spencer Cox’s Crusade — Spencer Cox, the Republican governor behind the Disagree Better campaign, thinks he can drain the bile from partisan combat. This article explains how trying to do this "almost broke him."

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 Happens When We Stop Trying to Win a Difficult Conversation? — An explanation of the surprising advantages of abandoning efforts to win an argument.
• Civil Society
  Civil Discourse, Civic Friendship, and Civil Liberties. — Why intellectual humility, truth-seeking, and a willingness to engage those who disagree with us are essential to preserving civil discourse and protecting our fundamental liberties.
• Suppressing Opponents
  Terms of Engagement - How to Be a Dissident in an Age of Fear – Ash Center — What does it take to stand up for what you believe in when your personal safety, security and even liberty are at stake? This Ash Center discussion talks about speaking out in tumultuous times.
• Psychological Complexity
  Scouts and Soldiers in the Social Sector — This is an old Daniel Stid post that he referenced in a new one. Here he points out that we all tend to see the world as we want it to be, rather than as it is. We need to work to avoid that mistake.
• Psychological Complexity
  Why Smart People Keep Falling for Stupid Ideas — Four psychological biases explain how the smartest people can make the dumbest decisions and hidden logic behind the madness you see everywhere.
• Theories of Change
  PolicyLink - Project All - Insight Report -2026 — Project All was conceived as an exploration of curiosity and discovery to answer a fundamental question facing our nation: What would it take to realize a nation where all of us can flourish?
• Trust / Trust Earning
  Building Scaleable Trust - Of Identity, Commons and Governance with Grace Rachmany of Sideways Earth — We know we need to create communities of place, purpose and passion – but if we can do this, how do we find other communities to link with so we can scale from community to region (based on shared action)?
• De-Escalation Strategies
  "Must we be nice to Trump voters?" — How do we challenge incivility, disrespect, and hate without becoming doppelgangers of that which oppose?
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  Building A Culture of Repair: What It Is, and Why It Matters — America's 250 birthday is a milestone that invites celebration, reckoning and a chance to reflect on what this country has built and what it has needs to repair.
• Theories of Change
  The Funder's Palette: A Spectrum of Approaches for Systems Change — An examination of some of the most compelling examples of systems change and a review of the approaches, tools and mindsets that make success possible.
• Social / Economic Complexity
  Morality Is Cooperation — Our deepest moral commitments are the operating instructions for shared life. Morality and relationship are not two subjects. They are one subject, seen from two sides.
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  With Rights Come Responsibilities - That's the American Way — Our fundamental freedoms and personal security ultimately depend on our willingness to take responsibility for helping provide these things to our fellow citizens.
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  The civic consensus beneath America's political divide | Brookings — Hopeful new survey data that suggests that Americans remain more united in their civic identity than today's polarized politics would suggest.
• Civil Society
  The Citizenship Test — A thought-provoking essay outlining the civic virtues and shared allegiances that we ought to cultivate and require.
• Corruption
  Why Anticorruption Campaigns Aren’t a Silver Bullet | Journal of Democracy — Calling for accountability against corrupt officials is a powerful message for building a reform movement. Unfortunately, it can also make it harder to attract support from opponents.
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  Breaking the Cycle: Transitional Justice in America After Trump — An article that asks us to think ahead to Post-Trump America and consider turning our transitional justice tools inward so that we can better reckon with societal failures we have long refused to face.
• Artificial Intelligence
  We've mistaken the coping mechanism for the job — The 'Middle Layer' of the social hierarchy plays a critical role in holding everything together. What happens if we replace people in these roles with AI agents?
• Constructive Advocacy
  The Interview: An Expert on Conflict Says Your Relationships Are Doomed Without It — In her new book, “The Art of Fighting,” the conflict resolution facilitator Priya Parker argues that we could use more conflict, provided that we get better at handling it.
• Saving Democracy
  Why democracy requires renewal — People are ready for bold democratic reform that the country hasn't seen in decades, says Pew Research Center's President Michael Dimock.
• Constructive Communication
  Listening Starts at Home | Blake Moore & Salud Carbajal — The latest Disagree Better Public Service Announcement with Representatives Blake Moore (R-UT) and Salud Carbajal (D-CA) who both explain how disagreement can be respectful and creative.
•  

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.)

• Social / Economic Complexity
  Economists Who Weren’t Worried About the Debt Are Now Panicking — An explanation of why the United States' tendency to resolve short-term disputes by borrowing from future generations is so dangerous.
• Class Inequity
  Why the Welfare Debate Went Silent — An article that asks an all-important question, what’s the best way to aid the poor?
• Saving Democracy
  Alaska’s Ranked-Choice Voting Travesty — Disturbing news for supporters of ranked choice voting and an explanation of why it is so important to get the details right.
• Saving Democracy
  Democracies Need Creative Destruction — We can't just complain about our government's many failings, we have to find ways to fix things. This article, from Foreign Affairs, tries to do just that.
• Saving Democracy
  Are Americans Losing Faith in Capitalism? We Asked Them. — We asked Americans how they feel about capitalism versus socialism. The results suggest a major shift in the national attitude.
• Immigration
  This Could Be the Year Germany's Far-Right Goes Mainstream — An important reminder that other countries are facing a populist rebellion against high levels of immigration from culturally dissimilar parts of the world.
• Race / Anti-Racism
  Blinded by Colour-blindness — From Free Black Thought: an essay outlining an alternative way of being black in contemporary society.
• Israel, Hamas, Iran, and Related Wars
  Death and Sex in Palestine — A disturbing look at the Palestinian culture of martyrdom that explains much of the intractability of the ongoing conflict (while also raising important and difficult ethical issues).
• Artificial Intelligence
  The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical. — A direct link to Bill Gates' widely quoted essay outlining the dangers associated with AI and the things which we might do to limit those dangers.
• Left / Right Conflict
  Woke 1 Was Anti-Populist, and Not in the Good Way — By demanding the purification of the individual and by branding broad swathes of the public as part of the oppressor class, 'Woke 1' besmirched the average Americans who Democrats once championed.
• Peacebuilding
  Here’s How One Country May Have Solved a Violent Uprising — A story about one of the rarest things: a contemporary peace agreement that actually seems to be working and offering real hope to the people of Turkey and its Kurdish minority.
• Progressive Left / Socialism
  Yes, Woke 1.0 Was Crazy. Now Where’s the Accountability? — An argument that efforts to move beyond the excesses of progressive peak-woke politics would be greatly facilitated by public apologies and serious efforts to put things right.
• Saving Democracy
  Unusual Spending Raises Prospect of Election Meddling in Alaska — A window into some of the things bad-faith actors are doing to distort the democratic process in ways that may unduly influence the outcome of the upcoming election.
• Artificial Intelligence
  AI and the New Age of Bioweapons — A worrying article outlining one of the most terrifying threats associated with AI and a big reason why we have to get past our hyper-polarized politics so that we can start working effectively together.
• Climate / Environment / Health
  Net Zero Won't Fix Climate Change. Technology Will — A provocative essay that asks us to treat our warming planet as an engineering problem to be solved (rather than a moral failing).
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  The Concept Is as Old as Aristotle. It Can Still Cause a Ruckus. — An exploration of the long and complex history of a critically important concept -- the common good —with important implications for those trying to imagine a democracy in which we'd all like to live.
• Saving Democracy
  This Is Why People Hate the Government — An interview with Ann Lowrey, the author of 'The Time Tax,' a book that explains why so many people find so much of what government does to be so maddening.
• Left / Right Conflict
  There Is a Sickness Worse Than Wokeness — Amid the welcome willingness of people to start addressing the excesses of the woke left, an essay that explains how an equally, and perhaps more serious, a kind of wokeness is emerging on the right.
• Progressive Left / Socialism
  Confessions of a Former Social Justice Warrior — Sabrina Joy Stevens spent two decades building the progressive movement from the inside. She explains what finally made her walk away -- and what the movement she helped build has become.
• Rule of Law
  The Media’s Lawfare Enabling — An argument that legal journalists, who ought to know better, are cheering on meritless lawsuits against President Trump (and undermining confidence in the rule of law in the process).
• Interstate War
  Ukraine Planned to Swarm Moscow Airports With AI-Guided Drones — The stalled operation, code-named “M&Ms,” sought to isolate Russian elites and force Vladimir Putin to negotiate a truce. It also illustrates the kind of havoc that any small-scale drone campaign could unleash on any modern society.

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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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