Category: politics
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Rebranding Power, Rebranding America Through Culture and Spectacle
This week, a massive banner featuring President Donald Trump’s portrait was draped across the Department of Labor building in Washington, D.C., alongside an American flag and Theodore Roosevelt. It carried the phrase “American Workers First.” In announcing it at a Cabinet meeting, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-Deremer said, “Mr. President, I invite you to see…
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The Problem(s) With Facts
My friend, David C. Barker of American University sent me a copy of his new book, One Nation, Two Realities: Dueling Facts in American Democracy. It is an important addition to the current questions about “facts,” “truth,” “interpretation,” and “polarization.” Co-authored with Morgan Marietta of UMass Lowell, the book is quite a comprehensive and I commend…
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A House Divided: Announcing New Conversation Materials on Political Division
American public life is highly divided and people find it more and more difficult to talk to one another. Not only are there solution wars over specific issues, but people increasingly lament division per se. I am therefore very pleased to announce publication today of the most recent NIF issue guide, A House Divided: What Would…
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Two Competing Mythologies
Many people speak of a “tribalism” that seems to be on the rise in America and in our communities these days. By this they appear to mean, for the most part, a bipolar set of group identities, locked in conflict with one another and whose boundaries are based in large part on antipathy toward the…
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Many Ways to Express Citizenship
Many ways to express citizenship, an incomplete list (add your ideas): Read reputable news outlets Examine the sources of news that you come into contact with Read news outlets you disagree with Read LOCAL news outlets Talk with a friend or family member about their views; share yours Attend civic and community meetings Vote Encourage…
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Machinebrain, Gardenbrain, Forestbrain
Some of my friends may have heard me refer to “machinebrain” and “gardenbrain” in conversation over the past few months. This idea is taken from Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer’s The Gardens of Democracy, in which they argue that a new way of thinking about social systems needs to be developed. Liu and Hanauer contrast a…
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What Do I Do?
As most of my friends and colleagues know, I am a program officer at the Kettering Foundation. Even though it has “foundation” in its name, Kettering is best described as a “research institute.” (We aren’t a grant maker.) As a program officer, I am responsible for one or more portfolios of research. This begs the question: What…
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Neighborhood Community Politics and #Blizzard2016
I study democratic politics and I mean both of those terms in the most fundamental way possible. I understand “politics” to mean “the way people who live in a place make choices and address shared problems and opportunities, where there are disagreements about what should be done.” And by “democracy” I mean “people collectively deciding…
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Immigration: Stalemate or Progress?
The way difficult issues like immigration are framed by policy leaders and experts is often at odds, or at least out of step with, the way in which people see those issues. Where the dominant political discourse frequently sees conflict, people in communities are wrestling with tensions among the things they hold valuable. The question…
Brad Rourke 