About this newsletter
This newsletter is for people who want to help reduce the toxicity of our us-vs-them divides in America — who want to reduce contemptuous, us-versus-them, team-based ways of thinking, and the more extreme, zero-compromise attitudes that leads to.
My name is Zachary Elwood and I’m the author of two books, Defusing American Anger (for all audiences) and How Contempt Destroys Democracy (for a liberal/anti-Trump audience). To learn about these books, go to american-anger.com. I also have a psychology-focused podcast where I sometimes talk about U.S. polarization (see a playlist of those episodes).
Nothing I write here is paywalled, so no pressure to do a paid subscription; you can read anything I write at any time. Paid subscriptions encourage me to spend more time on this work and give me (much needed) moral support. To get all my writings for free, just hit Subscribe and do the free option:
I see what I do as essentially political conflict resolution: helping people better understand the nature of our toxic political divides so that they can approach that conflict in healthier ways that avoid unnecessarily amplifying the conflict. I see this work as aligned with political passion and activism; I think trying to understand how conflict works helps anyone pursue their goals and engage in more persuasive ways.
You might like this newsletter if…
I think you’ll get value out of subscribing to this newsletter if any of the following are true:
You’re worried about toxic us-vs-them anger in America and want ideas on what you can do to help with that problem.
You have a job that requires you to think about our political/cultural divides (e.g., a manager, an HR professional, a marketer who wants to speak to a wide range of people).
You’re a political activist who wants to learn some conflict resolution principles (which, in my opinion, are also powerful tools for accomplishing one’s goals).
You work in the political depolarization space and want to stay in touch with what I’m doing, or just want some occasional ideas.
You want to support me in my work. (All subscribers encourage me to work on these problems. Money from paid subscribers I use to improve and promote my work.)
About me
My name is Zachary Elwood, and I’m the author of the book Defusing American Anger and How Contempt Destroys Democracy (read some reviews). I decided to get involved in this work after doing a lot of polarization-related talks and research for my podcast, People Who Read People (you can see the politics-related episodes here).
One of the things that has encouraged me in this work is the American citizens, on the right and left, who’ve told me my work has helped reduce their us-vs-them animosity, and helped them see our divides in a new light. As I like to often say: you can think one political group is much worse than the other while still seeing us-vs-them polarization as a major problem, and while seeing the importance of working on reducing political toxicity and contempt. In other words, we shouldn’t let our anger at the “other side” get in the way of us working on this problem: if we use our anger as an excuse to not work on this problem, we’ll never get better.
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