Kristin Hansen: As America’s political “world series” wraps up, let’s focus on the long game + Richard Harwood Concurring Statement

Hyperpolarization Graphic

Newsletter 300!! — November 19, 2024

 

Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess

Kristin Hansen, Executive Director at Civic Health Project; and Keynote Coach at Stanford Business School sent this essay out by email on November 4, before we knew the results of the election.  It is still very relevant as it  focuses on what would come next — no matter who won. We asked her if we could repost it here, and she agreed. The first few paragraphs aren't relevant anymore: we know who won, we know that we found that out quickly, and fortunately, it didn't get ugly. (Do watch the TikTok video she linked to explaining why we are not heading for a civil war — it's funny and pretty convincing. Then move down to "What will we do next." Because that's the question most of us are grappling with now. And Kristin's answer is one we all should take seriously and act on however we can.

We also were in a Zoom with Kristin right after the election in which she made a point about what motivated voters — policy preferences or systemic preferences — that we thought was particularly perceptive.  I asked if we could quote her from that meeting too. Rather than have us do that, she wrote several paragraphs on that distinction, which were are sharing after her original essay.  Thanks, Kristin!

 

As America’s political “world series” wraps up, let’s focus on the long game

How about that World Series? Following the epic clash of two storied franchises, Dodgers fans are still celebrating, while Yankees fans are misty-eyed about what might have been. As for me, I’m a diehard SF Giants fan, and I’m already excited about next season … looking at you, Buster Posey!

The beauty of baseball, America’s pastime, is that there’s always next season.

And this week? America’s “world series” of politics comes to a head. After demanding our attention, ingesting our donations, soliciting our votes, and triggering our passions for months on end, Team Democrat and Team Republican will face off in “the most consequential election of our lifetimes.”

Who will win, who will lose?

Despite the confident assertions of countless prognosticators, none of us knows yet whether we will soon be celebrating like Dodgers fans or mourning like Yankees fans. Crazy.

How long will it take for us to know?

A day, a week, longer? This, too, is uncertain.

Will this election cycle get ugly?

Will the days ahead have more of a “storm the battlements” vibe, or more of a “get up and go to work” vibe? Incredibly, and depressingly, even this is uncertain.

(For a fun, reassuring take on why we’re probably not heading for civil war, watch this short TikTok video.)

All of these uncertainties are disquieting. They create voids into which we collectively pour our anxieties, suspicions, grievances, and worst-case scenarios.

Our relationships, communities, and country — already frayed and fragile — strain further as we use imperfect math to calculate the risks of choosing badly, of not knowing for too long, of turning against each other in the process.

But in the days ahead, inch by inch, win or lose, we will gradually be relieved of these uncertainties as ballots are grindingly counted, results are called, skirmishes are settled, and America’s next political season comes into view.

What will we do next?

Now that’s a great question. At Civic Health Project, the organization I lead, we’re feeling impatient to get through this election and energized to jumpstart critical work on the other side.

Let’s face it, no matter who wins in this election cycle, they aren’t going to solve all our problems. Like it or not, we the people have a lot of work to do.

Across our towns, schools, workplaces, churches, clubs, councils, across all the beautiful tapestry of our civic life, we the people must address America’s yearning needs for cultural reconciliation, democracy renovation, and societal innovation.

Across our formal institutions -- the civilian, military, economic, academic, and other entities that shape American civic life at the highest levels -- we the people must choose to renovate and renew, rather than disparage and dismantle, these intersecting pillars of American strength.

Across our media, social media, and entertainment channels, we the people must signal with our preferences that we crave narratives of solution and connection, and we reject narratives of cynicism and division.

Across the chasm of this turbulent election, all of this work waits for us.

(Visit Conversation.us to find out how Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs are lowering the heat and finding a way forward together.)

So yes, this week, let’s prepare to celebrate like Dodgers fans or mourn like Yankees fans.

Then, as quickly as we can, let’s find in ourselves and each other the grace, respect, humility, curiosity, and hope to engage together in our ongoing work of civic repair and renewal.

We, the people, are democracy. Let’s get to work. Let’s build.


What U.S. Motivated Voters on Tuesday? 

(The separate email to us from Kristin.)

Our starting point should be to assume that most voters are making informed choices, not mistakes, when they vote. Are some voters misinformed? Perhaps. But personally I'd feel indignant if anyone suggested to me that my voting choices are misinformed or misguided.

Then, we should consider what motivates all voters to vote the way we do. On one level, our votes signal our policy preferences, and our votes for president signal whether we want that person to move our country to the "left" or to the "right" on a whole host of policy issues. On this, the voters have spoken pretty clearly.

On another level, our last few elections have also been seen as signaling different systemic preferences, i.e. what system or form of self-governance do we prefer? Do we want to be governed by more "liberal" or more "illiberal" leaders? Do we want them to behave in ways that are more "democratic" or more "autocratic?" Do we want our leaders to accelerate or inhibit America's progress towards becoming a true multiracial, pluralistic democracy? 

My hunch is that most voters are motivated by policy preferences, and not thinking as much about systemic preferences. And in the policy arena, there are many opportunities for elected leaders from both parties to work across the aisle on the issues that voters said were important to them: the economy, immigration, crime, abortion, etc. This is their job, and they should do it. 

But of course, the leaders we have just elected are also empowered to make systemic changes, even if we voters aren't explicitly asking for this. I think we in the healthy democracy field have a lot of opportunity here, to engage all Americans in considering what is precious about a system that allows us to govern ourselves, and what we give up when we cede this in any way. We need to overcome many barriers to have this conversation, including language barriers (are we a "democracy" or  a "republic"), geographic barriers (because we are increasingly sorted into red and blue areas), trust barriers (are we simply "out of touch" elites protecting corroded, status quo institutions), philosophical barriers (preferring bigger vs smaller government) and other barriers. 

America's upcoming 250th birthday could provide an ideal opportunity to overcome these barriers, and to bring Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs together into a deep, honest conversation about what we want to preserve and what we want to renovate in the American experiment. Can we come together into one shared conversation about America's next chapter? And in doing so, can we approach one another with grace, respect, humility, curiosity, and hope? We should try. We need to try.

Heidi and Guy's response to Kristin

Kristin makes excellent points in both of these essays (indeed, that's why we asked to post them on BI). But I'd add a few more thoughts to hers.  First, while the left has been warning that Trump is a would-be dictator, and that a vote for Trump is a vote for authoritarianism, what they don't know (or don't believe or don't care) is that the right thinks the same thing about the left. The right sees, for instance, the imposition of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs throughout the government, U.S. educational systems, and many businesses, as the insistence that everyone sign onto and embrace leftist values, regardless of whether they believe them. They think that censoring "hate speech" and "disinformation" are code words and cover ups for taking away citizens' first amendment rights to free speech.  So the right has been just as concerned about the fate of U.S. democracy as the left is, but for different reasons.  

Based on the reading we've been doing, it seems very likely that Kristin is right when she said that most of the people who voted for Trump did it more for policy reasons than for systemic reasons. Many, if not most, people, it seems to us, were voting against the policies and systemic changes being advocated by the other side, rather than for the policies and systemic changes that their side favors. A big part of the reason why so many people thought this way was that the campaign rhetoric on both sides tended to concentrate on the many reasons why their supporters should fear the other side, rather than talking about the positive steps they planned to take. (This might be more true on the Democratic side than the Republican side, as Trump was pretty clear about many of the measures he planned to implement. But they all were focused on undoing all of the "evil" things the Democrats had done. There wasn't much positive discussion about how he was going to move America forward.)

Many of these who voted red (for Trump) on the basis of systemic reasons, we suspect (we haven't done a poll), are not saying that they prefer autocracy.  Rather, they are saying they prefer freedom of speech, and conservative values regarding, for instance, judging people on the basis of their merit and what they have contributed to society, rather than the color of their skin. (It is telling that it is conservative values that sound like Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, whereas many on today's left, and indeed, many of Joe Biden's policies, favor people according to the color of their skin, not by "the content of their character.") Many objected to the left's "antiracist" (but still race-based) bifurcation of society into oppressor and oppressed groups and the resulting policies which favored those deemed "oppressed" at the expense of those deemed "oppressors."

So yes, Kristin, we, citizens of America, have a very important conversation to have about what form of government we want. I suspect almost all of us want democracy, and that likely means that we want rule of law, not rule of tyrant. Most of us want to be accepted for whomever we are, and are willing to do the same for others if they do not threaten us. Most of us want to have a say in policies that affect us, at least in principle (most people, probably, are more like the fellow in Kristin's TikTok video who doesn't want to get off the couch).  But if we don't get off the couch, then we shouldn't complain when things don't go the way we want them to go.  We need to engage and participate in our democracy if we want it to work!

That said, sadly, most of us need to learn (or relearn) how to do this.  Many of us no longer know how to talk to people who are different from us without making them angry and getting angry ourselves.  We don't know how to listen or process information that contradicts what we believe — we are used to simply rejecting it, and the people holding those views, as stupid, misinformed, or evil.  So before we have these all-so-important conversations, many of us would do well to take an online civics course and another online course in basic conflict resolution skills (with a particular emphasis on listening). Or perhaps such skills could be taught before the main event — the conversation on what we want for America's "next chapter." However we have that conversation, we agree, it is extremely important. And if we can come to some agreements (and I'm guessing we can), we can indeed make America a better place than it was before — for everyone: right, left, and center. 

Concurring Statement by Richard Harwood

On November 7, Michael Prihoda with the Hardwood Institute sent us a statement just released by their Founder and President which he wanted to share. It is relevant to our conversation with Kristin, so we are including it here.

America is facing a crisis of belief—belief in our institutions, in each other, and in ourselves. People of all political persuasions feel left out and left behind. While so many Americans yearn deeply to contribute to moving this country forward, they feel powerless and don’t know where to begin.

That leaves us with a critical question: ‘How do we meet this moment?’

My chief concern in these coming days is how we pick up the pieces of a splintered nation and fundamentally address the divisions, the mistrust, and the lack of hope that pervade our communities and society. Traditional political analysis and election post-mortems miss the point and thus will miss this moment. More divisive politics isn’t going to get us where we need to go. Electing a new president won’t either. But there is a real alternative—a new civic path that engages Americans as builders, doers, and innovators. This new civic path has the power to restore our belief in ourselves and one another. I know because I see it every day. In fact, as the election aftermath plays out, I’ll be supporting community-led change efforts in Jim Jordan’s district in Ohio the week of November 11 and

I’ve been working with these communities for years now. As different as they are, both are proving that we can create change on the issues that really matter to people—things like education, youth, senior care, and mental health. They demonstrate that, amid our real differences, we can come together and take shared action that moves our communities and the nation forward in a fundamentally different way. There is a way to meet the moment and deal with our crisis of belief: We need to get on a new civic path.

 

We (Guy and Heidi) very much agree. We are working on redeploying much of the material on Beyond Intractability into something we are calling a "Constructive Conflict Resource Guide" which we hope will give people in all 53 "massively parallel roles," as well as private citizens, tools they can use to start building and walking such a "new civic path." Though the Guide isn't yet available, we will continue to share ideas — ours and others — about how we can create this new  path in these newsletters. We welcome contributions to this effort!

 


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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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