To Unite a Divided America, Make People Work for It

By Jonathan Holloway

If we Americans listened to one another, perhaps we would recognize how absurd our discourse has become. It is our own fault that political discussions today are hotheaded arguments over whether the hooligans storming the halls of the Capitol were taking a tour or fomenting an insurrection; if we broadened our audiences, perhaps we would see the fallacy of claims that all Republicans are committed to voter suppression and that all Democrats are committed to voter fraud.

multi-sectorWade Lee HudsonJuly 2, 2021politics, community, patriotismComment

Who Can Win America’s Politics of Humiliation?

By Thomas L. Friedman

…It has been obvious ever since Trump first ran for president that many of his core supporters actually hate the people who hate Trump, more than they care about Trump or any particular action he takes, no matter how awful.

The media feed Trump’s supporters a daily diet of how outrageous this or that Trump action is — but none of it diminishes their support. Because many Trump supporters are not attracted to his policies. They’re attracted to his attitude — his willingness and evident delight in skewering the people they hate and who they feel look down on them.

Humiliation, in my view, is the most underestimated force in politics and international relations. The poverty of dignity explains so much more behavior than the poverty of money….

SystemicWade Lee HudsonJune 18, 2021meritocracy, class, politicsComment

Trumpism Without Borders

By Thomas B. Edsall

America is embedded in a world that is troubled by insidious parallel variants of the same structural problems — anti-immigrant fervor, political tribalism, racism, ethnic tension, authoritarianism and inequality — that led to a right-wing takeover of the federal government by Donald Trump.

The peculiarly American characteristics of the Trump years have blinded us to the spread of this radical disorder worldwide — even as some prescient scholars and analysts have seen the connections all along and have been trying to make the public aware of them.

multi-sectorWade Lee HudsonJune 16, 2021class, inequality, politics, economicsComment

Talk With Your Enemy? Dialogue about Dialogue

By Alan Levin

…I have to admit to being a slow learner in being able to talk with people who disagree with me politically, especially if they are conservative or right-wing. A helpful teaching for me is that we are not our ideas. I am not my beliefs and therefore neither is anyone else. People are far more than any particular idea that they happen to believe. This is especially true of political thinking involving abstractions, complex sets of ideas that often have little to do with the deeper values and intentions that move a person through life….

SocialWade Lee HudsonMay 18, 2021relationships, compassion, politicsComment

The Fear of Demographic Eclipse

multi-sectorWade Lee HudsonJanuary 18, 2021class, inequality, power, politics, race, culturalComment