"When I first saw your work, I rolled my eyes." On skepticism about reducing us-vs-them thinking.
Serious conflict inevitably leads to a widespread instinct to scoff at conflict-reduction efforts. To escape the toxic conflict spiral, we must see that instinct as part of our problem.
“I’ll be honest, when I first came across your page… I rolled my eyes.” So started a message I got on Substack a couple weeks ago. I’ll share the rest of that message below.
When it comes to political depolarization/bridge-building efforts, I think many people are skeptical about, if not downright hostile to, such efforts. And this is entirely understandable: serious conflict inevitably leads to many people being skeptical about attempts to reduce the intensity of that conflict. When you perceive many bad, immoral, harmful things being done by the “other side,” attempts to reduce the intensity of the conflict are easily seen as a defense of the “bad guys,” a failure to be as judgmental and critical as the moment demands.
This is how many people in America, on “the left” and “the right,” perceive polarization-reduction efforts. A few years ago I would have had the same objections.
I’ll share the full message below (taken from this post by Stand Up Lawyer). And because this comes from an anti-Trump perspective, I think it’s important to try to imagine a version of this coming from a Trump voter/supporter, but focused on their sources of anger. I’ve read plenty of those types of messages, too. And if your instinct is to scoff at the other side’s anger and dismiss it as largely silly and stupid (or worse), I’d recommend my book Defusing American Anger, in which I try to help people better understand the “other side” (and to understand why that’s important in the first place).
The message:
I’ll be honest, when I first came across your page in I’d like to say February 2025 I rolled my eyes.
“How quaint. We have a group of wanna be authoritarians running roughshod over the government and promising to abuse its citizens. One of the first acts of this government was to pardon the rioters and insurrectionists of January 6, and here’s another liberal leaning ‘both sides bad!’ guy who just wants liberals to make nice with people who spit in our faces and relish using the government to harm us. Just another Charlie Brown who’s absolutely sure that this is the time that Lucy won’t pull the football away.”
(I swear this is not me being a paragraph guy full of insults, I think it’s important to let you know where I’ve started to see where I have arrived)
I will admit that the more I have thought about your thesis, the more interesting it is to me.
I started to think about my own journey. In law school in 2009-2012, I used to attend conservative legal organization events not because I agreed with them, but because I found people who could exchange ideas in an intelligent way that helped me think better about my own views. I had friends who were committed conservatives, but we had basic respect for each other’s views and intelligence.
I didn’t start to walk around with contempt for Republicans until about 2015 when the leading candidate for the Republican nomination rode his way to the top by telling everyone how much he hated people like me (aka people from California), how people like me (ie anyone left of Mitt Romney) hated America and we basically weren’t even people.
After years of a political movement not only telling me they hated me, but they wanted to use the government to make life worse for people they disagree with politically (and when in government did just that), then yes, the contempt that didn’t used to be there suddenly came out. I found myself less patient with people with different political views, and yes, more contemptuous of them. I was much more likely since then to judge someone for a handful of views I disagree with rather than view them as a complete person.
To me, it didn’t matter if someone was reluctantly supporting Maga as a lesser of two evils or strongly disagreed with how Trump behaves publicly, they in my view were still complicit in his worst abuses and deserving of the contempt others have showed even if they were only halfway in.
So to a certain extent, I have started to see the thesis of your argument play out in real time: that the cycle of contempt is self sustaining, and it makes people not want to make peace because they’re so angry at the contempt being thrown at them
Basically, I had been of the view that I don’t want to make the first move for peace because I don’t think it will accomplish anything, and yes, I’m aggrieved at the decade of contempt and disrespect from the political movement that controls all levels of government
For me, what I would like is for the other side to come to me first and say I’m sorry, and then I would be more amenable to a dialogue. But what I don’t want to do is apologize for the sake of apologizing and then get nothing back, because then it feels like contrition is treated as a punch line rather than as something that everyone needs to do
I see that in the comments a lot, you have people say that it’s the other side’s fault and they don’t want to be the first to say sorry and they are “tired of doing the work and getting nothing in return”
Anyhow, as much as I retain skepticism about whether this project would work, I’ve come around to the view that I could probably stand to explore this topic further
It seems like there might be something to the idea that you don’t seek to lower the temperature because you demand the other person apologize back, or even first, there is a value inherent in not walking around hating millions of strangers based on your own assumptions of who they are as people. Because you cannot run a government or a society with this high level of societal hatred or distrust, and what we’re doing obviously is making things worse.
Which leads me to ask: do you have any hard copies of your book for sale or is it only on Kindle?
A few related follow-up reads:
For anti-Trump Americans: thoughts on how contempt for and anger at Trump and his supporters can coincide with a desire to reduce polarization
That includes a link to a three-time-Trump-voter’s thoughts on what he’s angry about and his attempt to avoid excessive us-vs-them thinking
Thoughts on how groups in conflict always have major differences, and both groups will use those differences as ways to blame the other side. Recognizing this basic fact can help us understand the angry narratives of the “other side.”
Again, if you find it hard to understand the other side’s sources of anger, I recommend my book Defusing American Anger. It attempts to walk through various hot-button topics and sources of anger (including views of Trump himself) and explain how rational, well meaning people can come to very different stances.
This doesn't get talked about enough, thanks for writing! It can be so hard to see intergroup conflict for what it is when we are in the middle of it. It doesn't help that the more extreme voices get amplified. I was talking to a peacebuilder recently and said "If we are asking people to question their own deeply held beliefs, don't we need to do the same?" and she said something like "Thats how we're trained, but does it happen in practice?". Being able to see beyond our convictions - even if just while trying to understand another's perspective - might be one of the most challenging things we can do, but I think it also may be one of the most helpful and liberating.
I was on a panel once with a medical ethicist who said that in his experience people fought vehemently about general rules, but when it came to specific cases they found more agreement. In my world, forests, that also tends to be true.