For many people, Trump represents a uniquely dangerous figure in American history. But what if the contemptuous, maximally pessimistic ways many people talk about Trump and Republicans help put more “wind in the sails” of polarized, polarizing leaders like Trump? Similarly, do excessive contempt and overly pessimistic framings from Republicans help create more support for divisive, us-vs-them approaches by Democrats? Is America in a self-reinforcing feedback loop of contempt and anger?
In this talk for Richard Davies’ series How Do We Fix it? (www.howdowefixit.me) Zachary Elwood argues that excessive contempt for each other is the problem underlying all other political discord and democracy-erosion problems. He and Richard discuss how liberal contempt for conservatives can create a feedback loop that empowers highly antagonistic and us-vs-them leaders, why our worst-case caricatures of the other side are so tempting and yet so wrong, and why changing how we talk about the “other side” can make us more persuasive and effective and not, as many people believe, weaker.
If you want to learn more, or if (like many people), you’re skeptical about these ideas, learn more at american-anger.com.
Episode links:
TRANSCRIPT
(Transcript is automatically generated and contains errors)
my views of Trump have not changed my, how I speak and how I think about, uh, people who have voted for him have changed a lot because I think it’s [00:01:00] the tendency of conflict is for so many people to see the other side as, as this monolith. And so we end up seeing the entire other side as boiling down to the worst people on that side. /end quote
That was a snippet from a talk I had a few weeks ago with Richard Davies, for his show How do we fix it? That series is focused on reporting on the work and actions of Braver Angels— the nation’s largest cross-partisan volunteer-led movement to bridge the partisan divide. You can learn more about the show at https://www.howdowefixit.me.
This will be a reshare of that talk I had with Richard. One of Richard’s main questions to me is: why did I write a book aimed at liberals about the importance of working to reduce toxic polarization and contempt? In the view of many Democratic-leaning and anti-Trump Americans, the problem is simply Trump and Republicans; the implication that there might be things for them to work on to reduce toxicity and political discord can upset people. But as I argue in my book, anyone who wants to reduce toxic, us-vs-them ways of engaging should be curious to know how we got to this highly polarized moment in time, and not be content to settle for simplistic “it’s all their fault” narratives; they must be brave enough to examine polarizing behaviors and tendencies on quote “their side” of the conflict – even if they think the “other side” is worse.
I also talk about my own personal journey from someone who used to regularly post insulting, contemptuous posts about Trump voters on social media, to someone who now sees reducing toxic polarization as the most important endeavor of all, not just for America, but for the world. If you dislike highly antagonistic, highly us-vs-them ways of engaging, you must see that contempt is what puts the wind in the sails of highly polarized and polarizing people like Trump. And I talk about how one can do work on depolarization even while pursuing one’s own political goals; and how taking such approaches actually helps, not hinders, one’s political activism.
If you like this talk, check out my Substack on polarization topics, which you can find at defusingamericananger.substack.com. I have more than 1300 subscribers on there. One of my most popular pieces in the last few months was a piece entitled, “8 tips for activists who want to reduce polarization.” You can read some positive reviews my books have gotten at my site american-anger.com. One review I was proud of comes from Dan F. Stone, polarization researcher and author of the book Undue Hate. Dan said, “Elwood is one of the wisest voices on the topic of toxic polarization. His writing is clear, thoughtful, and well-researched… America needs its citizens to listen to Zach.”
Okay here’s my talk with Richard Davies, for his podcast How Do We Fix It?
Richard: [00:00:00] We’re talking again about political polarization, which I think is a bigger crisis than global warming rapid changes in AI or exploding levels of public debt. Now, why would I say that? Because we have to come together to solve our problems and polarization prevents this from happening. You might have seen a recent poll that says More than 60% of Americans around two thirds now think the country is so politically divided, we can’t solve the nation’s problems.
This compares with half the population who thought that five years ago. Americans know our crisis of division is getting worse. We’re gonna discuss that with Zachary Elwood,
Zach: my views of Trump have not changed my, how I speak and how I think about, uh, people who have voted for him have changed a lot because I think it’s [00:01:00] the tendency of conflict is for so many people to see the other side as, as this monolith. And so we end up seeing the entire other side as boiling down to the worst people on that side.
Richard: Our show is about fixes. Yeah. How to make the world a better place. How do we fix it? How do we fix it? Hi, I am Richard Davies back again, and the author I’m about to speak with. Said this and I quote, we don’t just disagree on issues. We increasingly view our political adversaries as immoral, deluded, and dangerous.
Our fear and contempt affect our stances on issues making us more hardened in our views and less willing to compromise. I’m Richard Davies, and the author I’m about to speak with said that he’s Zachary Elwood, who has written two books on toxic [00:02:00] polarization. The first was Diffusing American Anger. We’re about to discuss his latest, how Contempt destroys Democracy.
Now, this book is not written for all Americans, but instead for liberals and progressives, people who for the most part, loath our president. Did political liberals and progressives play a role in ensuring Donald Trump’s election? We discussed this provocative thought and more, including misperceptions about what conservatives really believe and why it is so hard to criticize our own side.
Here’s our conversation. Zachary Elwood, welcome to How Do We Fix It? Hi Richard. Thanks for having me. So, my first and, and most obvious question, why write this book for liberals for the left and not for everyone?
Zach: It’s definitely a case of, I think everyone needs to hear these messages, but I also think we [00:03:00] need to put these ideas into, uh, persuasive arguments for specific audiences.
So me being on the more liberal anti-Trump side. I thought I was better suited to
Richard: write for that audience. I think some liberals may be surprised that you’re targeting this book at them, right? Because they think so many of my friends who are liberals think, uh, that people who support Trump or are ignorant or stupid and that they’re not the problem.
Um, it’s, it’s the other side.
Zach: Right? And I think that’s, that’s part of the argument I’m making is that I think we have to. Think about how we might be contributing to increasing toxicity, even if we think the quote other side is bad. The nature of conflict is that people on both sides will always, or generally think the other side is, is much worse, and that becomes an excuse to not examine our behavior.
So yeah, my book [00:04:00] was definitely an appeal. To try to get liberal anti-Trump people to see how they might be contributing and, and think about those things.
Richard: So do you think that liberal anti-Trump people are contributing to the problem of polarization?
Zach: I do, yes. And I would also point to liberal and progressive people who have made those arguments, including writing entire books about that topic.
And I do like to emphasize. I think because a lot of people will hear that and think, oh, you’re saying both sides are the same? But I think it’s very important for this work for reducing toxicity to point out that you can think the other side is worse, while also acknowledging we’re in a self-reinforcing, uh, cycle that where both sides do contribute and, and help build each other’s narratives of, and
Richard: you have an interesting backstory because you used to be.
Part of the problem,
Zach: right? Yeah. I, uh, pre 2, 20 20, I was quite, you know, you could say polarized. Uh, I spent a good amount of [00:05:00] time online on social media lashing out and venting my anger and, uh, disgust at Trump, making, you know, insulting moral judgments about people that had, uh, you know, voted for him and kind of like lumping in the entire other side.
As this overall bad or ignorant or stupid or whatever group. And I think that’s kind of the fundamental driver of, of polarization, of toxic conflict is so many people. Issuing, uh, thinking about and issuing statements about the other side as if they’re this monolithic mass of bad people, which just ramps up the, the divides more.
Richard: So many liberals and progressives, uh, think that, uh, it’s obvious that Trump’s motives are malicious and authoritarian. What are they missing? Maybe not about Trump, but about Trump’s supporters.
Zach: Yeah, I think it’s very important to separate leaders from the people that vote for them. My views of Trump have not changed my [00:06:00] how I speak and how I think about, uh, people who have voted for him have changed a lot because I think it’s the tendency of conflict is for so many people.
To see the other side as, as this monolith. And so we end up seeing the entire other side as boiling down to the worst people on that side. And, and then you can see examples of this all the time where always so many people are, are picking out like the worst and most rude and, and most antisocial behaviors on the other side and, and applying it to the entire other side.
You know, you can see this with, uh. The, like, the horrible comments about, uh, Charlie Kirk’s murder, for example. You know that this tells us everything about liberals, or you can see it on the liberal side for various things about the right. You know, if you’re someone who, like me, thinks Trump is very bad, it’s very important to see that he is a, uh, his, his election, his support comes from decades of increasing hostility, partisan hostility on both sides.[00:07:00]
Toxic conflict by its nature creates a more support for, uh, us versus them divisive
Richard: approaches. One of the strongest points you make is that contempt for the other side is like a feedback loop. They say nasty things about us, we say mean things about them, and the vicious cycle just gets worse and worse.
Mm-hmm.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think, uh, uh, a lot of. People who study conflict talk about the self-reinforcing cycles, including even in personal interpersonal dynamics of how, you know, we can, we often bring out the worst in other people by. They, they do something bad. Our reaction to it confirms to them that, uh, we are the malicious, aggressive ones.
They, they have a lower opinion of us. They speak in more toxic ways. But if you can start seeing how many people do contribute to the toxicity. And help drive it. I think that’s an important first step for winding it back.
Richard: One thing I’ve learned [00:08:00] recently, and your book certainly reinforced this, is that by focusing so much outrage on Trump, by liberals.
That that’s actually strengthened him. It’s helped him with his supporters because the more angry one side is at their opponent, the more that the people who voted for Trump go, well, we better rally around our
Zach: guy. Right? The ways that we can approach conflict can help build support for our enemies. Uh, and I.
I’ve written a good amount about this on my substack also about the interesting ways in which how we respond, uh, to things can actually help create and strengthen the very things we dislike. And I think that’s an very important thing to see about, uh, toxic conflict. Yeah.
Richard: Okay. So how do our distorted views of the other side ramp [00:09:00] up?
Our divides make
Zach: things worse. When you see the other side as uniformly bad, when you see their motivations, their goals on so many different topics as uniformly bad or even evil, it becomes very hard to compromise because you’re, there’s multiple pressures internally and externally. Group pressures of even if you wanted to compromise, you have to contend with the very angry people on your side who do not want to compromise and are very angry at you ever.
Compromising. So just to say there’s this buildup of, of incentives where the, that there becomes more and more pressures to take more US versus them and team-based approaches because there’s inner and outer pressures. And even if somebody, uh, wanted to take better approaches, they’re at the whims of the group dynamics.
You know, if, if they took approaches the group didn’t like, they’ll be, they’ll lose power, right. So. We tend to think of the leaders and the media as having all this power, but you have to also factor in, there’s this group [00:10:00] dynamic of they’re, they’re at, they’re, they’re getting affected by all the people around them too.
Right. It’s not, it’s not a simple case of certain people have power and other people don’t. It’s this group dynamic. Yeah.
Richard: There’s a lot of data that’s been produced, many polls, a lot of research about how polarized we are. One finding that you cite, which is just shocking, is that 72% of Republicans think Democrats are immoral and, uh, not very different.
Uh, 63% of Democrats say the same thing about Republicans. That in other words, you know, and this, this is, might be higher now. Yeah, it may be. This was, this was a Pew research poll taken several years ago.
Zach: I think the really interesting thing is seeing how those kinds of surveys have grown, you know, the, those that dislike, that hostility, the, the very negative, [00:11:00] pessimistic views of the quote other side.
Seeing how that has ramped up over the past, you know, 20 years. I think noticing or thinking about how we got there and seeing how it’s a long building problem as part of seeing our divides, our toxicity. From kind of a bird’s eye, big picture view because I think so many of us are in the moment about the things that are outraging us to unwind this.
I think more of us need to start taking a step back and being like, how did we get here and how did those, if you can start understanding the factors that led us here, then you’re in a better position to speak in different ways, even as you pursue your goals and these kinds of things.
Richard: Well, that invites the question, how did we get here?
Zach: Yeah. Well that’s a big, that that’s a big one. Uh, I don’t, I don’t pretend to know all the factors, but Yeah. Well, well, it hasn’t just happened, right? It hasn’t just happened because of Trump. No, definitely. Yeah. I think that’s also, you know, speaking of ways, I mean, there’s all sorts of ways that so many of us, uh, contribute to our divides, but I think.
When you, when we act as if Trump, you know, our divide [00:12:00] started with Trump, you know, there’s, there’s plenty of evidence and data showing that hostility, partisan hostility was, was increasing over the years. I think people that are on the liberal side, the anti-Trump side, if they’re genuinely curious about that, I think they do have to look at the point of view.
That our polarization, our divides did mean that many conservatives felt belittled and mocked and not understood at all by liberal mainstream media. And, and that’s, and liberal mainstream media and entertainment and news and including academia. All these cultural institutions, the way that conservative associated views were treated in those places made them feel, uh, very mocked, very belittled.
And it’s understandable. I mean, you can read. Uh, Erica Edison’s book Beyond Contempt, and she’s a, you know, she’s a progressive liberal person and she talks about this problem
Richard: well, but liberals would, would counter that by saying, look, who has all the power? [00:13:00] Right? It’s Republicans, they control the, the branches, the main branches of government.
They control the house and the Senate, the White House, but you point out. That when it comes to cultural power, TV networks, many mainstream media outlets mm-hmm. They tend to lean left. Mm-hmm. And so culturally, universities as well. Mm-hmm. Um, many large corporations that had DEI initiatives, liberals still have plenty of cultural power.
Zach: To me, it’s a big idea that I don’t see many people talk about too often, that groups in conflict. We’ll always have different traits, you know, so, so one way to see this is, you can imagine the way that the rage and frustration of a blue, mostly blue collar group will play out much differently than the rage and frustrations of a more highly educated and higher socioeconomic class.
And that’s just to [00:14:00] say we often try to compare the groups as if they’re equal. And we use that to score points. Like, you know, liberals will say. Uh, there’s no democratic equivalent of Trump, you know, and they’ll use that to score points and say, oh, clearly the whole problem is, is Trump and Republicans and Republicans are doing similar things.
They’ll pick out things that are true of Democrats that are not true of Republicans and say, oh, this shows us that this is all they’re fault. But I think it is important to recognize the, the cultural power of, of liberal associated ideas. Dominating, you know, huge swaths of entertainment media, of, of news media, of, of, uh, academia, of even the corporate settings that, that can make conservative people, uh, feel very much under threat, especially when you get into the cancel culture thing that was, you know, very prevalent a few years ago.
But I think, yeah, it’s important to see that regardless of the political power. The cultural [00:15:00] power plays a big role, and I think the argument can be made that liberals have much more power in the, in the sense, in the, in the ways that really mattered in everyday life to, uh, to a lot of people. And it’s a factor that might explain why, uh, Republicans were more okay with a, an, an aggressive figure like Trump.
Richard: A couple of years ago here on how do we fix it? We did a podcast with Kate Carney of More In Common, which is an organization that researches polarization and looks at how to build a more united resilient society, not only in America, but but overseas. More in common found that both liberals and conservatives have major misconceptions about the other side.
Do you have a few examples of that? Where are liberals wrong about
Zach: conservatives? Yeah, more in common is great. The, um, they did research on what they call the perception gaps, and they have a [00:16:00] great site. Both sides just generally see the other side as, as holding much more extreme views than they do. Uh, I mean, one major one to dig into is, you know, the amount of, uh, racism that, that liberals perceive on the right, and there’s one of the gaps.
Perception gaps was about immigration, where liberals thought that, uh, a cer you know, a, a large percentage of Republicans would disagree with the statement. Immigration can be a valuable asset to society, something like this. But it was a, a large percentage of Republicans did agree that well done immigration can be a good thing, right?
Like, but, but to liberals, that was a very, something that they would perceive as hardly any Republicans saying the, these kinds of gaps. This is, how do We
Richard: fix it? I’m Richard Davies, and we’re hearing from Zachary Elwood, the author of How Contempt Destroys Democracy. He has a website that’s well worth visiting.
Its [00:17:00] american anger.com. We have a link to it on our podcast show page. The vast majority of Americans know we’re polarized and they believe that the these divisions are destructive. Why is it. This crisis is ignored by both sides and, and often by the media, right? No,
Zach: it’s that. That is a very interesting thing.
So often you’ll see articles and op-eds about polarization. It’s not really talking about the things you and I have talked about. It’s mainly about just talking about our divides generally, or it’s. Talking about the other side as being the root of the polarization of the divides. When you start to understand how conflict works and why it’s so hard to, uh, get over why it’s so hard to resolve, I think it makes sense that it’s so little talked about because in order to talk about the things you and I have talked about, about how there can be.
[00:18:00] Contributions to the self-reinforcing conflict. In order to talk about that, I think at a mature and helpful level, it requires self-examination. So, uh, group examination of your own side. It’s just very hard to talk about that because you end up getting scared that people, your allies are going to attack you.
So I think it’s a fundamental thing about conflict. That makes it hard to resolve because the conflict makes it hard to even talk about resolving the conflict. I mean, that’s why I got into this work is because I looked around and why aren’t more people in the mainstream media, journalists, pundits, politicians, why aren’t they talking about these things that, uh, polarization and conflict researchers have talked about and, and know about conflict?
Right? So I just saw my role as helping to share some of these ideas that I think. More people should talk about, but it’s just so hard to talk about. As you probably know, it’s, it’s so easy to get. You know, pushback from people and even internally to not want to think about these [00:19:00] things.
Richard: Yeah. Most of my friends are liberals and it’s hard at say, you know, uh, having dinner with somebody or, or just chatting with somebody to go, yeah.
But. There is a reason why people on the other side think that way. Yeah. That’s
Zach: really uncomfortable. Yeah. I’ve lost a, I’ve lost a good amount of friends and I’ve been at some uncomfortable dinner parties with, you know, liberal, uh, friends and acquaintances where Yeah. You, you don’t really, it can be very hard to have these conversations
Richard: if they think you’re the skunk in the room.
Yeah.
Zach: But, you know. Yeah. And, and similarly that, you know, that that dynamic is happening on the right too, where, you know, there there’s a, there’s less room for having a. Less and less room for having nuanced conversations. You are not asking this to be
Richard: more moderate, are you?
Zach: No, I, yeah, I think that’s a, that is a, a common misunderstanding, which I think gets in the way of, of, of this work because.
I, my stance is that you have to separate the dimensions of what we believe. You have to separate [00:20:00] that from how we engage with other people. Right. And so you could view it as moderate in this. I’m advocating for maybe moderately in how you engage with other people, but not in your beliefs. That’s, that’s a very important distinction.
Richard: Most of our recent. Episodes on How Do We Fix it? Have been about the work of Braver Angels, which is a nationwide campaign that brings together liberals and conservatives in the same room and, and I’ve been to some of those, yeah. Organizes, debates and has branches across the country. Why is the work of Braver Angels and other groups in this depolarization space important?
Zach: I think there, there’s several ways it’s important. One is just getting a sense of what people. On the quote other side actually believe, which I think so often is we have distorted ideas about, and then, yeah, there’s various things that, uh, braver Angels does, uh, that I think are helpful exercises. And I actually talked to the co-founder of Braver Angels, [00:21:00] uh, bill Dougherty, who’s a, uh, a couple’s, uh, therapist.
And we talked about some of the, the processes, the exercises they do in Braver Angels. One of them involves. What they call the fishbowl exercise, which is having one political side listen to the other political group criticize themselves about what they are not doing so well and that actually humanizes both sides to each other.
And there’s actually an very interesting study about how that works. ’cause a lot of people’s instinct and conflict is to not criticize their own side, but actually criticizing your own side actually makes your group more human and more, you actually lower. Uh, the toxicity and the pushback on the other side by having more nuance and pushback on your own side, which is completely counterintuitive to how a lot of people think of conflict.
I think so, yeah. There’s many things that, uh. Braver angels and the these groups do that I think are very helpful for seeing the path out of these, these toxic dynamics. So
Richard: one of [00:22:00] the, uh, leading lights in Braver angels is Monica Guzman, who wrote a book, uh, I think it’s called, uh, I, I never thought of it that way.
And there’s some wonderful tips in that book and from Monica about how to. Listen to and understand your relatives, people who you’re very fond of, who may have completely different political views mm-hmm. Than you have.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Yes. Monica was a, uh, is a liberal Democrat voter, and her parents were, uh, Hispanic, uh, pro-Trump voters.
So that, yeah, she had some interesting stories in there about, you know, I think that would be relevant for, uh. Good learnings for, uh, liberal audience who, who are interested in depolarization.
Richard: I think, I think you’ve, you’ve hinted at this, but, but I think that if more liberals and especially more democratic party leaders [00:23:00] examined their own role in toxic polarization, it could make them stronger.
Not weaker.
Zach: Right. And I do, I do think that is such a, getting back to some of these fundamental instincts that we have that just lead us to ramp up toxic conflict more. I do think there is this instinct that people have, and I, and so often I hear it, people in the depolarization space hear it, that they think, oh, embracing these ideas will make us weaker.
They’ll make us lose more. But I think that’s just a completely. Wrong instinct on these areas. I think it, thinking about these things helps you. Understand who you’re talking to more. You don’t have distorted views of them, you, you’re more able to talk to them. You’re more able to persuade them. You’re more able to even reach compromises that might make more people happy.
Richard: And do you agree with the statement that toxic polarization is really the number one political crisis in America, that it’s holding up progress on so [00:24:00] many things?
Zach: Yeah, I’m probably an outlier, but I think it’s the number one human problem because I think. This problem has been with us forever. Our inability to deal with toxic conflict.
And unless we’re able, uh, to get some pockets of, of understanding about how we approach this problem, it’s just such a dangerous problem, especially as you know, we’re gonna have increasingly dangerous weapons that are capable of. Wiping out more and more people so that it only takes like a small fight of some sort to be, be increasingly dangerous.
For one example, you might have somebody making a disease in their lab in a few years, right? So the more toxic conflict we have in the world, I, I think these things like AI and, uh, gl uh, global warming, I think pale in comparison to these threats about toxic conflict combined with more and more advanced weaponry of whatever sort.
Richard: Talk a little bit about your personal journey. You’ve clearly [00:25:00] moved towards a view that toxic polarization is a real crisis, and that was not something that you felt, say, 10 years ago.
Zach: Yeah. Or even, or even, uh, since, yeah, 2019 I was insulting, uh, Trump supporters on online. So yeah, a pretty, a pretty quick journey for me.
Maybe what turned you around? I mean, it was a combination of things. I think I started thinking about how people perceived my words, like I drove away some friends, you know, on uh, social media. I lost some friends by my behavior and I started thinking. These are common ways, uh, uh, conflicts, progress and what they bring out in people.
Richard: Can you think of a specific example of where somebody who was a friend is no longer a friend? What was it that you said?
Zach: One, one of the things I said, uh, on Facebook, you know, and this was I think a lot of people. Do this, they’re just venting, right? It [00:26:00] doesn’t necessarily reflect what they believe, but, uh, one of the things I said was after Trump had got elected in 2016.
I said something like, uh oh, I hope as, you know, air Force One crashes or something like that. You know, I would say, you know, that’s probably one of the worst thing that, that might be the worst thing I said. But I was often like, venting like this in a very childish way, you know, looking back, uh, so a friend of the family, pretty good friend who, uh, I’d, who had once let me, you know, stay in their house for several weeks when I was in between, uh, moves, uh, moving to Portland, Oregon.
He saw that and he was like, oh, why don’t you go to, you know, Canada? You guys discussed me. You know, they, so, uh, I lost that friendship.
Richard: What else can we personally do to try and bring us back from the edge here? The
Zach: cliff edge. I mean, I think one of the only things we [00:27:00] can do is think about our own personal behavior because there’s little else we can control in this.
You know, we’re just individuals, most of us with without much power. Uh, but I do think we have more power than we often think. I think our instincts often in these situations is to think that we don’t have power and that the power is somewhere out there, you know, by these politicians or with this media conglomerates.
But I do think it’s important to see that. How we treat each other, the ways that leaders speak, the, the, the approaches that media companies take. Those are all, they’re driven by the buildup of all these interactions that all of us have every day, right? Like we form the culture every day that by how the millions of us treat each other and what we tolerate.
Richard: Let me end this podcast. The way Ezra Klein ends his podcasts, when he asks guests to recommend three books, they think [00:28:00] will, will, will be, uh, worth reading. So what do you think people should, uh, should, should look at to perhaps change their mind or influence their behavior on this? Well, it’d be a bit.
Maybe too
Zach: self-promotional to mention book, book, book. It would be, but, but, but that’s, you know, that’s, I would, I
Richard: would recommend that. Yes. That’s why I wrote it,
Zach: you know, I was like, I think it’ll, I wanted it to be the, the OneStop shop for especially liberal audiences who are concerned about these things or even skeptical of them.
I’ll give a few of my favorites. Um, I think, um, Taylor Dotson’s book, the Divide. Is very good. And that’s one of the better books on American polarization. And it talks about arrogance, especially in the, the views on both. You can hear these narratives on both sides about how, uh, we are the correct ones and.
Science and evidence shows this, [00:29:00] and they are the diluted ones, and there’s just this arrogance that gets promoted and ramp getting back to that self-reinforcing cycle. And both, both sides have different ways of framing that. Uh, but I thought that he, his, it was a very good examination of that, that aspect.
I’m a big fan of Robert Ali’s book Sustaining Democracy. It was so good that I, it was actually trying to accomplish a lot of the things I was trying to. Do with my book and I, if I had read his book earlier, I might have just not written my book. So I wanted to throw that in there as a nod to him. He has some very good, and he, he’s a, uh.
He, he, he’s at Vanderbilt. He’s like a teacher of political philosophy, something like that. But some very good arguments in there for people who are skeptical about some of the things I’ve said on, in this, in this podcast. Uh,
Richard: well thank you very much for joining us, Zachary Elwood. Thanks for sure, the real honor to be invited.
And that’s our show. Zachary Ellwood most recent book is How Contempt Destroys Democracy. His website is american [00:30:00] anger.com. I’m Richard Davies, host of How Do We Fix It? The podcast with a question mark at the end of the title. Our producer is the most excellent Miranda Schafer. As always, thanks for listening.
Zach: That was a talk with Richard Davies, which was a reshare of an episode from his series How Do We Fix It? I’m Zach Elwood, author of Defusing American Anger and How Contempt Destroys Democracy.
If you enjoyed this talk, or even if you’re skeptical about the ideas in it, I’d ask that you check out my work. Toxic political polarization is a hugely important and dangerous problem, and I think you should want to learn about different ways of looking at the problem. Because, let’s face it, the existing ways of thinking about and combating the problem just aren’t working. And I explain in my books why the typical ways of approaching these problems, our instinctual approaches, just don’t work, and why the standard approaches tend to add more fuel to the polarization fire.
Thanks for listening.