I’d be excited for someone to write up a really high-quality report on how to best reduce polarization / political dysfunction / democratic backsliding in the US and identify promising grants in this area (if anyone is interested, feel free to contact me as I’m potentially interested in making grants in this area (though I cannot promise anything, obviously)).
ETA (July 25th). Only managed to fully read the post now. I also think that the post is a little bit to partisan. My sense is that Trump and his supporters are clearly the main threat to US democracy and much worse than the Democrats/left. However, the Democrats/left also have some radicals, and some (parts of) cultural and elite institutions promote illiberal “woke” ideology and extreme identity politics (e.g., DiAngelo’s white fragility) that gives fuel to Trump and his base (see e.g. Urban (2023), Hughes (2024) or Bowles (2024), McWhorter (2021)). I wish they would stop doing that. It’s also not helpful to brand everyone who is concerned about illegal immigration and Islam as racist and Islamophobic. I think there are legitimate concerns to be had here (especially regarding radical Islam) and telling people that they are bigoted if they have any concerns will drive some of them towards Trump.
Thanks for this[1], I’ve been interested in this area for some time as well.
Two organizations / researchers in this area that I’d like to highlight (and get others’ views on) are Protect Democracy (the executive director is actually a GiveDirectly donor) and Lee Drutman—see e.g. his 2020 book Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America. For a shorter summary, see Drutman’s Vox piece (though Drutman has become less enthusiastic about ranked choice voting and more excited about fusion vorting).
I’d be excited for someone to write up a really high-quality report on how to best reduce polarization / political dysfunction / democratic backsliding in the US and identify promising grants in this area (if anyone is interested, feel free to contact me as I’m potentially interested in making grants in this area (though I cannot promise anything, obviously)).
ETA (July 25th). Only managed to fully read the post now. I also think that the post is a little bit to partisan. My sense is that Trump and his supporters are clearly the main threat to US democracy and much worse than the Democrats/left. However, the Democrats/left also have some radicals, and some (parts of) cultural and elite institutions promote illiberal “woke” ideology and extreme identity politics (e.g., DiAngelo’s white fragility) that gives fuel to Trump and his base (see e.g. Urban (2023), Hughes (2024) or Bowles (2024), McWhorter (2021)). I wish they would stop doing that. It’s also not helpful to brand everyone who is concerned about illegal immigration and Islam as racist and Islamophobic. I think there are legitimate concerns to be had here (especially regarding radical Islam) and telling people that they are bigoted if they have any concerns will drive some of them towards Trump.