Where the Right is not wrong, part 2: regulations are often burdensome

Regulations are often burdensome

Criticism of government regulation is a major theme of the Right. I used to think that was simply a cover for predatory business practices, pushed by wealthy executives. In part, of course, that is true. But at least two things have complicated the picture for me.

First, many of my unimpeachably liberal friends, engaged in social entrepreneurship or civil society projects, have complained about the crushing weight of regulations on their attempts at social betterment. One who builds zero energy buildings from a deep commitment to climate improvement is bogged down by contradictory and excessive city rules that often serve as an entryway to corruption. Another, in another city, finds efforts at housing for the poor caught in a maze of red tape. Doctors find that Medicare and Medicaid rules create enormous adverse incentives: for instance, they end up - through complex interactions among rules that no one intended - making it dramatically less lucrative to care for children than adults. I myself, as a Board members of the Freelancers Union, saw how Obamacare's rules, work the best of intentions, created many obstacles to innovation and plain hassle stay felt intrusive and unnecessary. We spent a great deal of time complaining about them.

Then, as a faculty member and University Senate representative at Rutgers, I have seen how the creep of undressing regulation had created a need for more and more layers of compliance offices, watchers watching the watchers, and petty procedures that eat up our time and raise our blood pressure. A few faculty members were once found to have padded their travel reports, generally in very minor ways, so the state demanded more control. Now all of us have had to increase our level of documentation manyfold, and an army of administrators has been hired to check on our forms, and another army to make sure nothing has slipped by the first line. And in order to justify their existence, they ask have to find reasons to reject a certain number of submissions, and we all scramble to catch up. Meanwhile there are gaping holes that they are unable to plug - we could certainly dodge the system if we put our minds to it. And when we're being treated with such mistrust, and losing money when invoices are rejected for stupid reasons, the temptation to dodge grows - everyone becomes more cynical.

This is the way regulation works, more or less inevitably: it starts with good intentions, to prevent abuses; but it can never cover all possibilities, it always creates unintended consequences and perverse incentives, it spread as it tries to plug the holes, and it undermines trust and collegiality.

Regulation works well only when it is a codification of what most people already believe is right. If most people are basically committed to honesty in their invoices, regulation works well to clarify and standardize exactly what that means, and to catch the rare deviants. But if the culture has degenerated to the point that no one expects honesty, regulation cannot rectify it. Indeed, they accelerate the decline, because no one feels is their responsibility any more. The same is true of regulation of businesses: when a business community feels that restrictions on pollution or rules about transactions are basically just, they see regulation as a positive because it sets a level playing field. But when they don't, there's no way government inspections can keep up with the ingenuity of violators.

When we of the Left see a need for regulation, we need to do the work of convincing the large majority of their rightness. Just passing a rule won't do it.

Where the Right is not wrong, Part 1: Experts don't know everything

I am a “Blue” – liberal, progressive – yet I am about to wander into areas that may make me seem “Red”. In our current state of polarization that feels dangerous. It seems to be required that we be on one side or the other; questioning one’s own tribe is often seen as treasonous, giving comfort to the enemy. Nevertheless, I believe that this tribal view, by making it impossible to work together, profoundly threatens our democracy and our future. I also believe that the core of the liberal / progressive view is the openness to other perspectives, the desire to reach out and to broaden the scope of inclusion.

So here I go. Reds make some important points that have made me think and learn. If there is anything good about the politics of the past few years, it is that we Blues have been forced to listen to those points a bit. Our bubbles have been pierced. Many on the Left have reacted by rebuilding their bubbles into walls (as it were), painting opponents with stereotypes of ignorance and racism. But others have begun listen more closely. There are human beings behind the right-wing ideologies. They are responding to some form of experience. They don’t find the Blue view convincing. And much of the time, they point to things that Blues have not properly taken into account or understood.

Here’s a first one: Experts and scientists don’t know all the answers. We Blues tend to accuse Reds of ignoring facts and the knowledge of experts. But when we think about it, we’re not so high on experts either, when they run against what we believe.

In fact, we started the skeptical turn. A set of philosophers popular on the Left, such as Michel Foucault, started arguing a half century ago that knowledge was never merely objective, was always intertwined with and tainted by the values of those in power. In my college years, our protests of the Vietnam War included a large dose of virulent criticism of the experts who kept assuring us that the war was going well, that we had a good strategy, that it would soon be over. Robert McNamara, with his brushed-back hair and wire-rimmed glasses, was viewed as the epitome of this technical proficiency that led us into a moral and practical abyss. And that feeling is not far from that of the Tea Party supporters I talk to now who feel like the educated classes are taking us down a similarly disastrous path.

We Blues, like the Reds, trust the experts only when we agree with them. For instance: The dominant economic theory of the past half-century has been the neoclassical, neoliberal embrace of free markets as the road to universal prosperity. Most of us Blues think this is nonsense, a triumph of conservative ideology. We are quick to point out any evidence which supports our more interventionist views, and to trumpet the views of those economists, like Krugman, who are on our side; but we ignore all the others, as well as obvious difficulties. Remember the 1970s? - the era of stagflation, which Keynesians could not account for. It was a depressing era, economically and culturally – “a kidney stone of a decade,” in Doonesbury’s phrase – despite a Democratic President with and a long-running dose of Keynesian policies.

Why do we resist those experts? Because their views don’t fit with our perspective. We put our judgment about economics, in other words, ahead of most experts in the field.

Then there are experts in bioengineering, artificial intelligence, and other whiz-bang scientific fields. They promise fantastic benefits for humanity from continued innovation. But most of us, I wager, are doubtful, worrying about the dangers and concerned that we are moving too fast.

The feeling that experts are steering the ship badly is actually shared by most liberals as well as most populists. There’s a general sense that we, the people, need to take control again from experts who are blinkered by their narrow specializations. So when we Blues accuse the Reds of ignoring science, we need to think more deeply about our own views.

For most of the past few centuries, it was an article of faith that unfettered scientific would bring benefits to everyone. The invention of the atom bomb sowed the first serious doubts, even among many of the scientists who developed it. Today we have a similar process in the genetic genetic field: scientists pleading with the political sphere to stop development of knowledge until we can explore ways to manage it.

Fundamentally, we all believe that science should serve the people. So we need to develop ways for democracy to control science. If we pay attention to the populist Right, that’s that they’re telling us. 

Alarm

When mistrust between major social groups starts to feed on itself, it can quickly turn into a vicious circle of increasing conflict that undermines institutions and destroys relations. We saw it less than a century ago in the collapse of Weimar Germany and the rise of the Nazis. More recently, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda have experienced similar patterns: groups that had lived together and intermarried for generations, despite simmering resentments, suddenly exploded into genocidal warfare

Those who have studied or experienced such descents into madness say that while it is  impossible to predict when things might get out of hand, the spiral can gain momentum very quickly. It starts with a deep sense of grievance by people who feel marginalized, left out of the core community, treated as second-class citizens. They may find their voice in a leader who expresses those resentments and promises a restoration of pride. Fed by the most powerful human emotions – resentment, humiliation, moral righteousness – that can quickly escalate into an us-or-them, with-us-or-against us battle. Norms of civility and democracy are seen as handcuffs in this battle, a luxury that can no longer be afforded. Any actions are justifiable in pursuit of victory over the despised enemy.

How close are we to this in the U.S.? It’s hard to tell, but there are very alarming signs.

• Political polarization has dramatically increased in the past decade, accelerating a trend going back to the 1970s. Most notably, Pew finds that on both sides of the political aisle, there has been a sharp increase in active dislike of the other side. In just the last four years, the percentage of Republicans who view Democrats very unfavorably has gone from 46% to 58%, and the percentage of Democrats who have the same view of Republicans has gone from 43% to 55%. This is the worst result in the 25 years this question has been asked.

• The 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer reports an extraordinary, unprecedented decline in trust in US institutions – one might almost call it a collapse. “The last year has seen an aggregate 37 percent slump in trust across government, media, businesses and non-government organizations (NGOs) in the U.S … The trust decline in the U.S. is the steepest ever measured among the ‘general population,’ and … among the ‘informed public’ trust ha[s] also imploded.”

More anecdotally, I was struck and alarmed by this story from David French – a National Review conservative, but not a Trump supporter, and therefore one of the shrinking group that can see a bit over the dividing wall:

“I’m reminded of an encounter at my church. People know that I opposed both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton. They often ask what I think of the president’s performance. My standard response: I like some things, I dislike others, but I really wish he showed better character. I don’t want him to lie. I said this to a sweet older lady not long ago, and she responded — in all sincerity — “You mean Trump lies?” “Yes,” I replied. “All the time.” She didn’t answer with a defense. She didn’t say “fake news.” We’d known each other for years, and she trusted my words.

For a moment, she seemed troubled. I wanted to talk more — to say that we can appreciate and applaud the good things he does, but we can’t ignore his flaws, we can’t defend his sins, and we can’t let him define the future of the Republican Party.

But just then, her jaw set. I saw a flare of defiance in her eyes. She took a sip of coffee, looked straight at me, and I knew exactly what was coming next:

‘Well, the Democrats are worse.’”

“The other side is worse” – that reasoning can justify anything. In the darker corners of the blogosphere, we already see it. A column in Townhall – far from the most extreme right-wing voice – says:

“For liberals, civility is … a way to keep you from interrupting their non-stop attacks on your rights, your faith, and your dignity ...

The problem is that progressives are not people of good faith.

They are not trying to reason. They are not trying to compromise. They do not accept the basic concept that all American citizens have inalienable rights and that the law must apply equally to everyone. They hate us. 

We are sub-human, unworthy of courtesy or respect. We have no rights; they might allow us some control over our personal lives, for now, but we exist at their sufferance. That’s their view. That’s their basic premise – and if you ever go on social media they will tell you. So it’s no wonder that they feel no need to be civil.

Time to accept reality. We don’t share a common foundation of beliefs … You can’t have a discussion or a conversation with people whose bottom line position is that you must be gone, or at least stripped of anything like your rights and sovereignty.

All you can do is fight them.”

These passions are strong on the left as well. I have heard liberals in my own circle dismiss all Trump supporters as stupid or evil, and occasionally say things that are so vicious towards the other side that I don’t even want to repeat them here. As a liberal myself, I tend to discount them, to excuse them as temporary aberrations in the heat of the moment. But they accelerate the vicious circle.

We have to stop this. It’s incredibly dangerous. We all feel morally justified. But the impulse to express moral outrage, while it makes us feel good, creates the real and present danger of bringing down the system. As progressives, our fundamental belief is that we should include rather than exclude. We have to move forward together, or we will move backward in a hurry.

I think there is actually a feasible solution – not easy, perhaps, but feasible. A ton of evidence suggests that it is as easy to break the vicious circle, even to reverse it, as it is to build it. In particular, when people experience the other side as listening to them seriously, and as willing to question their own orthodoxies, the walls can rapidly crumble and the weapons be sheathed.

I have seen this in action many times. I have myself had casual conversations with people on the Right – in marches or polarized meetings, or even online – which go roughly like this:

Conservative: “Liberals hate Western culture. They think Shakespeare shouldn’t be taught because he’s a dead white male. They would never criticize a Muslim terrorist. And when we do, they say we’re all racists.”

Me: “I’m a liberal, and I don’t think that. I love Shakespeare, and Plato, and Augustine, and Mark Twain. Some of my friends argue that we should be teaching more of non-Western cultures as well as Western -- that students should know something about Chinese and African and, yes, Muslim history -- but I've never heard anyone suggest Shakespeare should not be taught. I think we should stop making assumptions about people we don't know and start actually talking to each other.”

Conservative: [usually after a few exchanges, but rarely more than five minutes] “Judging by your comments, you sound like a traditional liberal who in this day and age is closer to being a moderate. I am focused on the ultra-left, of which you are certainly not one. …”

 In other words, one can very quickly move from a definition of the situation that sees  all liberals as bad, to one that sees some liberals as bad, and many that you can talk to. And I also find myself understanding some of what’s behind their views – the differences within the conservative view, the motivations I can sympathize with. And from there one can often begin to think about some concrete things you agree on.

A group called Better Angels is doing this systematically in Red-Blue dialogues around the country. Allsides publishes a news feed with a left column, a center column, and a right column showing the different perspectives on the same story. Spaceship Media holds moderated online dialogues across the political divide. Dozens of other organizations at the national level, and thousands of local groups, are working in the same direction to bridge the polarities. There’s at least a possible path forward towards breaking the cycle of mistrust.

Other things will be needed to heal our nation. I believe the soaring levels of economic inequality fundamentally damage the fabric of community. I believe that the growing effects of climate change may cause severe crises. But none of these problems – and others, including ones more important to conservatives – can be solved without a foundation of trust. None of them cannot be solved by either party alone. We need first to rebuild enough of a sense of shared destiny that we can agree on some steps together.

We have seen already that the erosion of trust makes it hard to do much of anything for anyone. Let us hope that it will not drag us into a state of conflict that will knock our civilization back by decades or centuries. Actually, let us do more than hope – let’s work hard to avoid that.

What is wrong with the left?

This is really getting frightening. We have a truly terrible President who consistently proposes policies that will hurt his own voters, and a Congress from his own party that can’t get anything done; yet current polls suggest that if the election was held today Trump would beat Hillary again. Trump’s favorability numbers have fallen below 40%; but so have the Democrats’. A Republican in Montana who actually alienated Fox News by body-slamming a reporter still won decisively. We are 0-for-5 in elections this year. We on the left have gained no ground against perhaps the most incompetent and malevolent administration in history. Read Mike Taibbi’s recent piece in Rolling Stone, and weep.

Democrats are suffering from an astounding case of myopia and defensiveness. We have been casting blame everywhere but on ourselves: we blame Fox, the Kochs, racism, stupidity, ignorance. But a good deal of the stupidity and ignorance is ours. We make up caricatures of Trump voters because we don’t talk to any of them. Because our values are so threatened, we imagine that those opposed to us must be evil. Yet everyone who actually does talk with Trumpists finds that the vast majority are decent people who share many of our concerns and desires. It’s a contradiction we don’t know how to deal with; it’s a lot easier to accuse them all of racism.

Trump’s supporters have two strong feelings. One, they feel profoundly alienated from us. They think we have contempt for them – and they have plenty of reason to believe it. Meanwhile, they think we are self-indulgent, self-satisfied, narcissistic, hypocritical; that we hold no strong moral beliefs, just follow our desires. We say, “How can they believe such things about concerned, caring, upright people as ourselves?” But why shouldn’t they believe it, when we have done so little to connect to them?

Second, they feel the country has gone in the wrong direction for a long time, that they have been left out of the big developments of the last half-century. Again, they have good reasons: their lives have gone downhill. They just want to work hard and build a better life for their children, and they are finding that harder and harder to do. They draw a perfectly natural conclusion: since things have gotten worse during an era when globalization and multiculturalism have spread through the land, they want those trends to stop.

Those two facts – they don’t trust us, and they feel things have been getting worse – are sufficient to explain what’s going on. We can cite statistics and expert studies about policy and consequences all we want, but they don’t square with the experience of Trump voters; all it does is to make them feel that the experts and the studies must be somehow rigged and distorted, and to trust us even less. The more we use science to insist we are right, the more we delegitimize science in the eyes of those who find the conclusions repellent.

When we react with outrage and disgust to Trump’s actions, his core supporters take that as evidence that he is doing the right thing. Since we are (from their perspective) the cause of the problems of the last half-century, the fact that we are upset means that things may be turning around. And the more upset we get, the more convinced they are.

If we don’t care about them, they certainly won’t care about us. And too many liberals don’t care about them. Hillary didn’t campaign in the small towns and rural areas; she thought she could win with the cosmopolitan cities. And now I hear liberals saying they don't want anything to do with Trump supporters, can't even talk to them, just have to beat them.

If that’s how we think, we deserve what we will get. I am not a seer, but I have been writing about these patterns for years (e.g., here and here). They go deep, and they will not change because we are outraged. Indeed, we are feeding the rage against ourselves. It’s getting to the point, as Taibbi notes, where nothing Republicans do will turn off their supporters, because at least they’re not Democrats. That’s a very dangerous condition.

Let’s go back to our core beliefs. This is a democracy. We believe in inclusion. If people are suffering, we want to help. It is absolutely inconsistent with our beliefs to say that 35% or 40% of the country should be tossed aside, treated with contempt. I have heard liberals say they hope Trump voters will suffer from the policies he puts in; how is that consistent with our beliefs? How is it anything other than petty vindictiveness?

We need to do the work to understand what’s going on, to listen, to work together with people whom we do not agree with. We need to construct a vision of the future which most people can get behind and see themselves in. That will not happen by yelling louder; we need to engage in real discussion that helps us find real paths forward, towards dignity, for us all.

Like it or not, we are in this together: not only our nation, but the people of the world are now too deeply intertwined for us to go it alone. Nor should we want to. We don’t don't disown our family members over political beliefs. We shouldn’t disown our fellow-citizens either.

This blog is essentially an effort to explore how to bridge this gap, and to rebuild a modicum of trust, so that we can once again have dialogues in search of common ends.

Understanding the liberal elite

I have been realizing recently that while it may be hard to understand Trump supporters, it’s just as hard to understand myself and my tribe.

As a member of the liberal elite – Northeastern, a professor, upper-middle-class, an environmentalist, a believer in multiculturalism and globalism – I feel pain these days whenever I think about politics. It seems that everything I care about is being trampled. It’s hard to pick up the morning newspaper. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about Trump, Gorsuch, McConnell – how much damage they are doing to the country and to all the causes I’ve supported and worked for.

It’s distressing to read pro-Trump opinion, even online. When I pass by a screen playing Fox News, I feel agitated and miserable, at times literally sick to my stomach. How can anyone believe that? Those facts are just wrong! That logic is totally distorted! They started it!

What I would really like to do is to withdraw from all this craziness, find a place of safety. Sometimes I try. I put my head down and just focus on my job, ignoring the political scene. Or I get together with others who share my views and venting: Can you believe what Trump just did? Isn’t the healthcare bill terrible? Is he going to be impeached? Is he going to stage a military coup? – It’s a gloomy conversation, but it validates my feelings, confirms that I’m not crazy, makes me feel less isolated.

I could get away from all this by lumping Trump supporters into a category of bad people. If I could just say that they are ignorant or evil – racists, a “basket of deplorables” – I wouldn’t have to deal with them. I could be comfortable over here on the good side, while they’re over there. I could just focus on beating them in the next election; then I could go back to ignoring them.

But that’s deeply wrong.

First, I can’t really get away from them. We are all in one country, and one world, and we are interdependent. If I ignore Trump voters, they can harm what I care about. Some of my liberal friends say that Trump is “not my President”; but actually, he is. When he acts, and his supporters cheer, it has real effects on things we care about. If we’re going to deal with problems of inequality, climate change, racial justice, immigration we’re going to have to build broad support and work together. This is a democracy; we have to deal with those who see things differently.

Winning the next election wouldn’t fix things, either. Yes, stopping the destructive policies is essential, but it’s not enough. We should have learned from thousands of years of history that if you suppress groups with different views, they become only more hardened and resistant, digging in, fighting back whenever they get an opening, even after many generations. We have to find ways to build a future together, for all our sakes.

And there’s something really twisted, especially for a liberal, in dismissing a large chunk of the country as not worth dealing with. If there’s any belief that defines us, it’s a belief in inclusion. We believe that we should work hard to include blacks fully in society, even though it’s a difficult process that often leads to tension and conflict. We believe in including Muslims, even though many of them have views of women’s roles that we find disconcerting, and some of them don’t want to have anything to do with us. We believe in rehabilitating murderers, giving them opportunities to rejoin society, rather than keeping them in prison forever. So how can we simply say that huge swaths of white working- and lower-class people, men and women, are so ignorant or evil that we just have to defeat them, or wait for them to die?

We have learned in the last decades that inclusion of others requires changes in ourselves – that it’s not just a matter of them becoming like us, but rather of our making a sustained effort to understand their perspective and finding ways to build together. We need to apply the same principles to our fellow citizens.

Simple talk

A fierce liberal activist led an anti-Trump march a few weeks ago. A pro-Trump group formed and started heckling them. He went over to the ringleader and said, “Let’s talk.” The man said, “I don’t want to talk to you”; but he was convinced by a younger member of his group to at least try.

So the two had a conversation. The anti-Trump guy started by looking for things they could agree on, and they found a few common points. But they disagreed a lot, and they argued for seven or eight minutes. They certainly didn’t resolve their differences.  At the end, the Trump supporter said, “I can’t vote the way you vote.”

But then he added something important:

“See, you’re normal. A lot of people, they don’t want to talk, they just want to impress, they’re haters now.”

“You’re normal.” Everything starts with that. If we see each other as normal, we can reduce the polarization that drives denialism and extremism. People take Limbaugh and Fox as gospel only because they see how strongly the “haters” oppose them; it’s a self-reinforcing cycle, and we liberals are playing into it by yelling and screaming. Many on the right would be less stuck if they knew it wasn’t just the haters -- that other “normal” people also see things differently. And then – only then – we will have a chance to unfreeze the positions, to look at facts together, to make some progress.

What impresses me about this conversation – here’s a spontaneous video of it – is how simple it was. There were no clever dialogic strategies or debating tricks, no facilitators. There was only a willingness to try. We can all do that.

A strategy for civil discussion

In the following, “we” includes a group of young professionals in Washington, DC. We have also spoken with other potential allies.

We're beginning to see the outlines of a strategy with many pieces.

We start from the belief that the current polarization of politics, with people dividing into warring tribes, is extremely dangerous: it is producing self-reinforcing vicious circles of mistrust that undermine the institutions of democracy and produce increasing levels of anger and hatred. No one is going to win in that atmosphere, no matter how elections come out. Therefore it is extremely important to improve the level of understanding and dialogue, and to begin to repair the social fabric through “bridging” conversations that improve the level of civil discourse.

The task is a massive, even quixotic one. Yet there may be an opening now precisely because things have gotten so bad that many people feel a new urgency to overcome the level of dysfunction, polarization, and misinformation in our politics. We are exploring a number of avenues, all very nascent. Here are a number of possibilities, with the current state of action:

Methods of dialogue and communication

Blog

This blog will discuss ways of building bridges across the political divide. Its stance is still fluid: Should it be hortatory or practical (how-to)? Should it try to be nonpartisan? I am increasingly of the view that in this environment, we can’t hide our own stances: we should be clear that we are on the progressive side of the spectrum, but are seeking a genuine dialogue with those in other positions. And part of the thrust has to be a critique of our progressive colleagues for misunderstanding much of the scene, and for reacting rather narrowly and defensively since the election.

Online interviews

We have conducted a series of very interesting online interviews. Recently we have established (somewhat) trusting relations with some conservative sites, which have allowed us to post requests for interviews. Some of the interviewees have been extremely enthusiastic about the effort. Ben Warren has been the driver of this initiative; we are just starting to develop a larger stable of interviewers, with a (flexibly) standardized set of questions and way of reporting.

In-person interviews

The DC group has gone several time to knock on doors in western Virginia -- Trump country -- and just talk openly. In general the reception has been good. Interestingly enough people are less open to discussion in politically mixed suburbs that in more solidly Trumpist rural areas. Others have also talked to marchers at an anti-abortion rally and other conservative gatherings. Again, the reception has been generally favorable.

In-person small-group meetings

This is a natural practice for many people trained in small-group dialogue techniques since the 1960s. The Civil Conversations Project, The National Institute for Civil Discourse, and Essential Partners, among many others, are exploring this avenue. Charles and Lavinia Hall have participated in meetings organized by American Revolution 2.0.

These conversations can be very exciting, but there are serious difficulties with scaling. First, it is extremely difficult to actually get people from both sides of the spectrum to come to such meetings. If it is to happen, it would require a trusted convener with credibility across the divide, which is rare (but we will mention a few possibilities below.) Second, these meetings require strong and highly skilled facilitation, which is in short supply and/or expensive. There is a wide network of sophisticated facilitators that we might be able to draw on, but the good ones can get high-paying jobs in corporate meetings and the like, so would not be able to sustain things on their own.

Personal / family discussions

In an earlier post, Ben Warren describes in some encouraging successes talking to conservatives in his own family. I have been interested to find that many of my progressive friends have similarly conservative family members and have been struggling with what to say or how to maintain relations. Most of them just avoid talking politics; but as Ben points out, this is an area where with a little thought we can all act as effective bridging agents.

“Elfing”

This is our tongue-in-cheek term for an online strategy – a benevolent variant of “trolling”. The idea is to go on conservative websites as participants, responding to articles and posts, usually through the comments. Elfing is not meant to be aggressive and partisan – not trying to shout down the opposition and prove them wrong. (That would not work anyway, because most sites have ways of excluding hostile participation.) The point is to engage in genuine dialogue, seeking to understand as well as to be understood.

We have found a number of significant conservative sites that are open to the such participation by progressives: for example, reddit’s r/Conservative site is quite open, though r/The_Donald is not. We have not pursued this very far, but we have learned that it takes a good deal of time and work to establish the initial level of trust that enables engagement. But this is a matter of persistence more than high skill. It seems plausible that a large number of elves could be developed with rather simple training, that could potentially begin to change the discourse from a closed self-amplifying echo chamber to a real discussion of issues.

Online discussions and interactions

These are not interviews (as described above), but deliberately open discussions among people with different views. Hi From the Other Side and Bring It to the Table  are good examples. We have not yet tried this ourselves.

We have had some traction pairing people up to talk about shared interests or information differences.  For example, a person who doesn’t know much about guns from a gun-enthusiast’s perspective might be paired with an informed gun-enthusiast by a mutual friend.  In theory, with the right structure or prompting, mutual respect and care for the shared friend could motivate good behavior.  This is an unusual kind of convention, in which individuals work as best they can across social networks without much structure, but its low startup cost might be a boon.

Within-group discussions

It seems important to have conversations within “tribes” as well as across them. There is much research evidence that affirmation of identity makes people more confident and willing to explore other points of view. And we have been experiencing the problem that it is very hard to start dialogues because both sides are afraid of being ambushed or mistreated by the others.

On the progressive side, I have found that quite a few I have spoken to agree with the basic point that there is a need for more bridging dialogue, but they are almost afraid to say it in their circle. My sense is that it is important to have conversations within the progressive community about the value of, and approach to, bridging dialogue. And I presume the same is true on the conservative side (though so far we have found a good deal of openness on that side, perhaps because conservatives feel more sure of themselves at this moment!)

Potential conveners / sponsors

It has become clear that no method can spread to scale without sponsors or conveners – institutions that have a position of trust in a wide community that bridges the political divide, and that might be enthusiastic about the task of improving civil discourse. We are considering, and starting to explore, three main possibilities:

Religious institutions (churches, etc)

Religion is still a relatively trusted institution for a large majority of the country. (Though some, mostly progressives, are actively suspicious of religion, these constitute quite a small percentage overall.) In conservative territory, churches are especially effective as community conveners. Some of the more fundamentalist churches are of course very closed, but many actually seem quite open and struggling with how to adapt to a cultural landscape that they clearly feel has changed. The Southern Baptist Convention, for example, a few years ago elected a Black President and apologized for its history of racism. At the moment the leadership is trying to dismiss pressure to accept gays, but there is a good deal of internal turmoil and counter-pressure. It seems plausible that the Convention, which has deep connections in conservative areas, would be interested in taking a lead in trying to build greater shared understanding and discourse.

We are at the moment reaching out to a few possible connectors into various religious communities.

Unions

Labor unions, usually starting on the other (progressive) side, have likewise been under pressure from their own members, and many were shocked by the level of Trump voting. Some are trying to figure out how to restore internal solidarity across this growing internal divide. They have the tools – regular meeting halls, conventions, member lists, and so – that might make them effective as bridging conveners. We are actively exploring possibilities here as well.

Businesses

This is a longer (and perhaps even more controversial) shot, but one might imagine a campaign by businesses like Dunkin’ Donuts for “conversation over coffee” – playing an active role in organizing conversations in their stores. Many voters across the spectrum feel comfortable in that context and might be intrigued by such a call. We’re haven’t done anything here yet but will try to find connections.

Other?

We are eager to hear other ideas. Some have suggested business schools or K-12 schools. What are other possibilities?

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