Colleague, News, and Opinion Links for the Week of May 18, 2025

Newsletter #355 - May 21, 2025

Reader Suggested Links

Highlighting links suggested by our readers. Please send us links to things that you find useful.

• Social / Economic Complexity
  Globalization Is Collapsing. Brace Yourselves. — For those who both supported and oppose globalization, thoughts about what might happen when it collapses.

• Social / Economic Complexity
  Wall Street Is Watching This Shipping Data to Gauge Tariff Impact — Amid all of the uncertainty about whether or not the great trade war will ever materialize -- there is reason to believe (based on global shipping activity) that it will come very soon.

• Theories of Change
  Loretta J. Ropss: Don't call people out -- call them in. — A toolkit for starting productive conversations instead of fights, and strategies that help challenge wrongdoing, while still creating space for growth, forgiveness and maybe even an unexpected friend.

• Psychological Complexity
  The Age of Not Knowing — Amid today's omnipresent uncertainties, a thought-provoking essay on the subject.

• Psychological Complexity
  On The Death of Daydreaming — More insightful food for thought as we grapple with the ways in which the modern age is altering the way in which we think.

• Israel / Hamas War
  The Gaza Famine Myth — A thoughtful and in-depth investigation into widespread allegations that famine threatens the people of Gaza -- an investigation that reveals that the situation is not as horrific as is widely believed.

• Class Inequity
  The Changing Politics of Oligarchy — The timely analysis of the complex way in which superrich "oligarchs" influence and manipulate our society.

Colleague Activities

Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.

• Non-Violence
  Understanding and Countering Agent Provocateurs in Nonviolent Movements — Provocateurs pose one of the biggest threats to nonviolent protest movements. This article explores strategies for preventing them from infiltrating and then discrediting a movement with provocative and indefensible actions.

• Psychological Complexity
  Outrage 63 – How Perceptions of Harm Drive Moral Outrage and Political Conflict – Sam Pratt — This episode of Outrage Overload explores the psychology underpinning morality and the stark divisions of political polarization,.

• Bridge Building
  Bridge Building, To Where? — A provocative essay asking hard but important questions about the theory of change underlying the "bridging" movement (and strategies for increasing its probability of success).

• US Politics
  The Illusion of Transparency: What the Trump Cabinet Meeting Really Reveals — Understanding the emotional appeal of political performance. Devid Beckemeyer of Outrage Overload reflects on a televised Trump cabinet meeting.

• Class Inequity
  It's time to retire this liberal catch phrase — Erica Etelson, author of Beyond Contempt: How Liberals Can Communicate Across the Great Divide suggests progressives should no longer ask "Why do they vote against their own interests?"

• Bridge Building
  Exploring a new typology of types of bonding, bridging, and breaking groups — Recording of a "deliberative journalism" call Martin Carcasson holds monthly, this one focused on new material he is developing on bonding, bridging, and breaking/toxic groups.

• Effective Problem-Solving
  Reunited Wisconsinites who disagree on abortion fight to extend postpartum Medicaid — Another "it has been done, it must be possible" story that we ought to try harder to replicate in other areas.

• Communication Complexity
  Journalism at a Crossroads: Complicating the Narrative, Regenerating Democracy — Duncan Autrey writes about how to create a civic media ecosystem that listens, belongs, and builds.

• Hate Mongering
  The War on Empathy by Musk, Trump, and Evangelicals — One of the cornerstones of authoritarianism is the destruction of the ties that bind citizens of the democracy together in ways that lead them to protect one another's interests.

• Non-Violence
  Don’t believe the doubters: protest still has power — Genuinely useful information about how to distinguish effective from ineffective protest strategies.

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.)

• US Politics
  Trump’s Inevitable Betrayal of His Supporters — An essay exploring the coming collision between President Trump's promises to his constituents and the likely impact of his actions.

• Social / Economic Complexity
  Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class — One of today's most important economic questions, which this article examines, focuses on the impact that globalization has had on middle-class communities in the developed world.

• US Politics
  The Democrats’ Fork in the Road — Democrats are about to make a fateful decision -- one that will cast a long shadow on all our lives. Are they going to focus on restoring the Biden-era political order or building something new and better.

• Authoritarianism
  The Most Corrupt Presidency in American History — Insights into Trump administration corruption from one of the world's leading experts on authoritarianism

• Disinformation
  Do Your Own Research: Liber-net's Misinfo Grant Database — For those who don't understand why those on the right find the left's efforts to control disinformation so threatening, an invitation to look at the evidence.

• Race / Anti-Racism
  The Resistance Is Gonna Be Woke — An argument that the reported death of the progressive left has been greatly exaggerated (and is probably an illusion).

• Race / Anti-Racism
  Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes — A thought-provoking argument that those who ignore politically inconvenient information about affirmative action are more interested in defending a narrative than in actually solving a problem.

• Psychological Complexity
  Your brain is biased to negativity. Here’s how to be more positive. — More insight into the astonishing complexity of the human mind and the ways in which evolution has taught us to be (at least by contemporary standards) overly cautious.

• Communication Complexity
  We’re Back to the Actually Internet — After the failure of "fact checking" as a strategy for separating truth from falsehood on the Internet, this article looks at what might come next.

• Race / Anti-Racism
  Diversity Is Good, Actually — From a more conservative perspective, support for diversity and an argument for looking at the term in more diverse and inclusive ways.

• Crime / Policing / Guns
  How Can You Be a Cop in a City That Hates You? — A rare article exploring the other side of the story -- what it's like to be a police officer in a community where law enforcement is widely viewed with contempt.

• Political Dysfunction
  America’s Air Traffic Fiasco — A case study of one of the bigger (and scarier) examples of why the public has lost trust in its governmental institutions (and why those institutions have failed to deliver on their core missions).

• Nihilists
  The Rise of Anti-Politics — As the support for US democracy and the associated political system continues its downward slide, reflections on the new era of anti-politics.

• Communication Complexity
  Enshittification — Important insight into the way in which the services offered by the big tech media platform are slowly eroding (now that their monopolies are firmly established).

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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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