One reason the tide of Authoritarianism is washing up all around us is that we’re not talking to one another in ways that count as real dialogue.   Either we’re content to confirm the views of friends, allies, and associates expecting to have our own views validated or we’re taking turns deploring one another’s views.   Neither is the stuff of civic discourse.

Among the reasons is the moralistic lens through which we see now see politics & the degree to which that lens has become decidedly monochromatic.   Further, we mostly encounter these views as disembodied from their possessors who we generally don’t live near, work with, or worship among those who don’t think as we do.

The Network’s begun w/out the knowing the remedy for this condition.   How should we reconvene these conversations?   To what end?   Is there a way to avoid having them fall apart into recrimination & hostility?  All questions for which I don’t have answers, but I have an idea abt how to get an answer.

Find people apt to disagree.   That’s a start.   Then ask something w/ a view to finding something abt which we do now agree.   That might be that we’re in a mess.   “Looks like we’re in a mess, don’t you think?”    Maybe stay there for a while, avoiding either diagnosis or prescription.