society

Required effort

It’s been an intense week for all, whether trying to avoid the bone chilling temperatures for so much of the country, confronting the wrenching debacle of the Los Angeles fires, or absorbing the whiplash of changes to our government.

My column today is a couple of resources on partisanship and our society, courtesy one of the most reliably well-prepared faculty seminar leaders I ever had the chance to work with over thirty years at National and an additional decade as a traditional academic. This fellow took preparation—assuring he had the widest array of materials, questioning assumptions, and everything that goes into teaching senior nonpartisan government officials of all stripes—to a new level.

He also happens to read this column faithfully, sending a couple of recommendations following the two columns earlier this week about Secretary Rubio’s guidance to his new department colleagues and indirectly all of us. My friend also knows that rebuilding a sense of community dialogue is the heart of what this column seeks.

Some of you will find these resources worth a glance as you prepare for your football, basketball, golf, or cooking channel pleasures this weekend.

—Jay J. Van Bavel and Andrea Pereira, “The Partisan Brain: an Identify-based model of political belief”, Trends in Cognitive Science, 17 July 2023, retrieved at https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/ak642

—“The Better Arguments Project”, AspenInstitute.org, no date but series of resources retrieved at https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/citizenship-and-american-identity-program/the-better-arguments-project/

—The Sustained Dialogue Institute, an on-going project to create a national dialogue on citizenship, retrieved at https://sustaineddialogue.org/

Wait, but Cynthia, these take digesting a lot of stuff to get a single, “right” answer! I was hoping you would send me a quick answer as we see on LInkedIn or BluSky or even Twitter. I don’t really read such extensive stuff as the first article, in particular.

That is the point: none of our world is easy these days, if that were ever true. The challenges we face are not bumper sticker or campaign pledge easy. I keep harping on the 340 million of us for a reason: that is a whole lot of different views, interests, concerns, and whines.

Everything, repeat EVERYTHING is a series of trade offs. Too often we associate those trade offs with our preferences as if they were gospel. For some, those choices are gospel, which is one’s privilege in this world, and freedom of belief is key for us all.

But the give and take required to get along with others is a sustained project. As former career ambassador I respect above any other, a giant among diplomats and men, invariably reminds us: a marriage requires care, feeding, and work so why not other things? I will paraphrase him to then ask “Why do we assume anything except hard work is the case in our lives, our foreign relations, or our society?”

I welcome your thoughts on this or any other topic. You may well have far better answers than I do but I know we need hear from each other in exchanging ideas regather than browbeating as if everything is a zero sum game. Please chime in.

I appreciate your time this Saturday. I also greatly thank those of you who subscribe financially as your support is invaluable.

Be well and be safe. FIN