Newsletter #266 — August 22, 2024
Reader Suggested Links
Highlighting links suggested by our readers. Please send us links to things that you find useful.
- Israel / Hamas War
Tactical Civilian Sacrifice — A short video that, I think, offers a much clearer image of Hamas' strategy -- a strategy that anybody who cares about the people of Gaza should condemn. - Communication Complexity
Media gatekeepers are losing control over the conversation, and robust censorship is their only chance to regain power — A critical and doubtless controversial look at big media, it's diminishing influence on our collective consciousness, and its efforts to reassert itself through various censorship strategies. - Israel / Hamas War
Israel's deterrence is working against Iran's threats - opinion — As Israel and the world waits for the expected Iranian attack, a hopeful argument that Israel is reestablishing the system of deterrence that, for years, successfully prevented a wider war. - Education
The Misery of Leading Columbia University — A look at what it takes to lead a major university today with important lessons about why effective and broadly supported leaders are now such a rarity. - Political Moderates
The Senator Warning Democrats of a Crisis Unfolding Beneath Their Noses — An in-depth profile highlighting the thinking of one Democrat who believes that his party has failed to grasp the reasons why so many people distrust Democrats. - US Election
Harris Gonna Code Switch — The linguistic analysis of how cultural diversity is reflected in our patterns of speech and what this says about how best to communicate with different groups. - Media Reform
American Political Satire Sucks Because It Force Feeds You Answers Instead of Asking You Questions — A critical essay that asks whether political satire in the United States is playing a positive or a negative role. - Israel / Hamas War
Michael Oren: Should Israel Strike First? — The report on the agonizing strategic choice facing Israel and questions about the degree to which the lessons of 1967 and 1973 apply.
Colleague Activities
Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
- Bridge Building
Addressing Questions from Skeptics of Political Depolarization and Bridge-building Work — Zachary Elwood summarizes a talk between Liz Joyner of The Village Square and Melissa Weintraub, the Executive Director of Resetting The Table. - Theories of Change
Listening is powerful. This one skill can transform relationships, and even lead to social change — A story with many powerful examples of how and why listening is so important to conflict resolution and reconciliation. - Theories of Change
A Framework for Democracy Philanthropy — A framework developed by Daniel Stid to help would-be philanthropists decide where, when, and how to invest money to make the biggest difference in strengthening democracy. - Constructive Advocacy
How to make sure your disruptive protest helps your cause. — From Waging Nonviolence, an article highlighting five key factors which determine whether controversial protests are more likely to spark backlash or create positive outcomes. - Theories of Change
Unpacking Massively Parallel Peacebuilding with Guy Burgess — A discussion Guy Burgess had with David Beckenmeyer with Outrage Overload about the threats to democracy and how massively parallel efforts can help address those threats. Though this was recorded 6 months ago, it was just released. - Immigration
The riots in the United Kingdom. — Isaac Saul on Tangle reports on the left's and the right's "take" on the UK riots and then shares his own view that the UK situation is dangerous, not only for them, but also for us in the U.S. - Social Complexity
Future Trends - 6 August 2024 — From the Alliance for Peacebuilding & Institute of Economics and Peace, a summary of the week's major developments in global news, and where IEP and AfP think these developments are going. - Non-Violence
We all want a nonviolent world. — From Waging Nonviolence, an announcement about Campaign Nonviolence Action Days from Sept. 21-Oct. 2 to mobilize for a culture of active nonviolence, free from war, poverty, racism and environmental destruction. - Developing a Unifying Vision
Love in Action: Embodying Love in our Organizing and Organizations — The moment we choose to love, we begin to move toward freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. - US Election
Quieting the Noise of this Political Season — Lamar Roth and Tom Klaus talk about quieting the noise around the current presidential election in the United States. They offer three tips for your consideration. - Saving Democracy
Could Changing how we Vote Make us Less Polarized? — BCB #105 — An article on "fusion voting." Under this system, third party-nominated candidates won’t just appear on the ballot under the new party, but also as either a Democrat or a Republican. The hope is this will encourage multi-party dialogue. - Israel / Hamas War
Iran-Israel: The Escalation Calculus — The dance between Israel and Iran continues — sometimes escalating, sometimes receding. This article is a bit dated now — things change so fast in that region — but it still has useful content. - Social Complexity
The complexity of American polarization — This excerpt from Zachary Elwood's book Defusing American Anger explores the complexity of our polarized society and why that complexity should make us question our certitude about the nature of our divides and our "enemies" - Bridge Building
Solidarity: Building Solidarity In an Era of Silos — In an age of increasing polarization and division, how can we build bridges? This episode explores the challenges and opportunities of building solidarity in our current social and political climate.
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.)
- Family / Gender / LBGTQ+
America’s Families Are Not Okay: Inside the crisis of parent-child estrangement. — A look at a seldom considered conflict that has enormous implications for human well-being — the conflict between parents and children. - Class Inequity
What Populism Is—And Isn't: Everything you need to know about the buzziest and most dangerous political force of our time. — A primmer on what everyone needs to know about the buzziest and most dangerous political force of our time. - Saving Democracy
Liberalism Offers a Language of Resistance Against Authoritarianism Everywhere. The West may have become complacent about defending liberalism but non-Western countries are naturally turning to it — Thoughts on the complex relationship between liberalism and authoritarianism and why fighting authoritarianism requires a stronger defense of liberalism. - Family / Gender / LBGTQ+
The kids are not okay — From Brookings, more analysis of the problems facing young people today. - Class Inequity
The great wealth wave — A hopeful argument that, while everyone was worrying about inequality and lack of economic opportunity, the Western world was actually moving in the opposite direction. - Political Moderates
Joe Manchin Has Some Unsolicited Advice for Kamala Harris and the Democrats — During this time of massively parallel partisanship, thoughts from one of the few politicians still inhabiting the middle ground between the two partisan extremes. - Political Moderates
The Governor Who Endorsed Trump to Heal American Politics — A profile of Utah Gov. Cox, the founder of the Disagree Better campaign, explaining why he thought that supporting Donald Trump was the best way to continue his efforts to depolarize US politics. - Israel / Hamas War
In Syria’s Hinterlands, the U.S. Wages a Hidden Campaign Against a Resurgent Islamic State — News about a war that most of us, in the US, didn't know we were fighting -- one that has US soldiers, on the ground in Syria, fighting ISIS. - Israel / Hamas War
Humanitarians Should Want Hamas’s Human-Sacrifice Strategy to Fail — A more in-depth exploration of the enormously difficult moral issues raised when aggressive authoritarian regimes employ civilian sacrifice tactics. - Family / Gender / LBGTQ+
How the Gay-Rights Movement Lost Its Way — The sad profile, with lessons for all advocacy groups, describing how a movement can be corrupted once its principal goals are attained. - Saving Democracy
What if Congress had more than two parties? Proportional representation could create a more functional Congress. A new report outlines how and why it just might work. — A provocative idea for reforming the U.S. Congress in ways that supporters believe would help defuse hyper-polarization by making Congress more like a parliament. - Psychological Complexity
the thin line — An exploration of the thin line that distinguishes efforts to support victimized groups from efforts to profit from their victimization. - Developing a Unifying Vision
Equality Is Good, Actually — Contrary to popular critiques, the liberal value of equality doesn’t make you weak or nihilistic. - Psychological Complexity
We Need Moral Direction — A thought-provoking essay that argues that we’ve forgotten the word morals and replaced it with boundaries. - Disinformation
Why the disinformation brigade has utterly failed to weaken Trump — An essay that asks why efforts to challenge Trump's highly successful efforts to build a political movement based on lies has, thus far, ended in failure. - Israel / Hamas War
Israel is fighting the hardest war in modern history — and winning. — From an Israeli (and a more general military perspective) reflections on the military challenges posed by the Gaza war and Israel's strategy for meeting those challenges. - Family / Gender / LBGTQ+
Masculinity Is on the Ballot — During a time when culture war politics seems to primarily focus on abortion, LBGTQIA+ issues, and feminism, news that questions about masculinity will be a big topic this year. - Education
To Rebuild Trust, Universities Need To Build Open-Minded Brands — Concrete steps that universities could take to earn back the public's trust (and do a better job of serving the larger society). - Family / Gender / LBGTQ+
Algorithms Are Making Kids Desperately Unhappy — An analysis of the truly dystopian reality — a society in which our relationships (and especially the relationships of young people) are driven by computer algorithms, not interpersonal interactions. - Class Inequity
Here Comes Kamala’s Mortgage Forgiveness — A review of a surprisingly large number of sometimes legally questionable governmental programs designed to promote housing affordability. The big question is, are they really affordable? - Superpower Conflict
Liberal Soulcraft: Liberalism is in trouble. It will take a concerted act of will to save it. — An excerpt from Alexandre Lefebvre’s new book “Liberalism as a Way of Life” —another effort to help us understand liberalism and why we need to defend it.
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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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