Transpartisan Notes

Transpartisan Note #39

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

Through the smoldering ruins of the most recent healthcare financing reform effort we see the faint outlines of a transpartisan approach to health care.

Former President Barack Obama issued a statement on the 7th anniversary of passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), one day before current Congressional Republicans pulled their proposed ACA ‘repeal and replace’ bill from the House floor.

The former president laid out the accomplishments he saw from the ACA and recognized the need for change, saying:

I’ve always said we should build on this law, just as Americans of both parties worked to improve Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid over the years. . . . But we should start from the baseline that any changes will make our health care system better, not worse for hardworking Americans. That should always be our priority.

In assessing the failure of his own bill President Trump said:

Look, we got no Democratic votes.  We got none, zero.

The plan Trump campaigned for, and for which his supporters voted, included affordable ‘insurance for everybody’ and a ‘demand that drug companies negotiate directly with Medicare and Medicaid and lower their prices, saying they will no longer be ‘politically protected.’

After his health care financing failure, House Speaker Paul Ryan said we need to learn ‘what we could have done to do it better’.  Ohio Governor John Kasich, last Donald Trump primary opponent, said ‘Trump needs to work with Democrats on health care.’  Senator Bernie Sanders asked the President to consider pending Senate legislation lifting the ban on federal health programs negotiating drug prices.

‘White House: Trump is serious about working with Democrats’, writes The Hill. ‘Republicans and Democrats need to work together on healthcare,’ says Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC).  Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins, after opposing the House bill, urged Democrats and Republicans to work together on health.  Bipartisan serves as word of the day.  We see transpartisan—bipartisan expanded—more likely to work than bipartisan alone.

By transpartisan we mean recognizing the tension in both parties between members seeking order—the leadership, the establishment, the elite—and the agitators for freedom—the freedom caucus, Bernie Sanders, and, in his populist guise, President Trump.  To us transpartisan means a sound health plan incorporating interests from all four quadrants—free right and left and order right and left.  See the Transpartisan Matrix.

Large numbers, probably well over fifty percent, of Americans use complementary, alternative, integrative, natural healing—paying billions for nutrition, chiropractic, massage therapy, acupuncture, and over 100 other recognized health modalities—as part or all of their personal health promotion efforts.  Virtually none of these health approaches formally appears in the current health care financing system of government and insurance company payments for drugs, surgery, radiation and diagnostics.

We believe the absence of the voice of these consumers from the health financing debate accounts for a significant amount of the dissatisfaction with both the ACA and its offered replacement.  Too many voices not heard.

These numbers track voter turnout for the 2016 presidential election.  President Trump is a minority president.  The vast majority of eligible voters did not vote for Trump—66 million voted for Clinton and 90 million stayed home, 63 million voted for Trump.  This need not be a crippling factor.  Thomas Jefferson squeaked into the White House after a tied Electoral College vote and 36 Congressional ballots and went on to have a consequential presidency.

We think a transpartisan process will strengthen any policy deliberation.  Non-voters affect daily politics.  Office holders write them off at their peril.  At a minimum, current office holders need to consider how their actions might provoke previous sideliners to vote and how.  We think this form of ‘survival anticipation’ played a key role in the failure of the ACA replacement.

The health financing bill failed to integrate the interests of the four quadrants—liberal and progressive Democrats and order and freedom Republicans—and, for that reason, we suggest, failed to become law.  When the four quadrant interests integrate the natural healing community and other underrepresented populations into the health care financing discussion, the nation will take the next steps toward a workable—and we would say transpartisan—national health policy.

Through the haze we see the outlines.

(The above image is the work of the U.S. federal government and in the public domain.)

Transpartisan Note #38

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

Our friend and colleague Steven P. Cohen, scholar, spiritual leader, and transpartisan activist, passed away at the age of 71 at his home in Teaneck, NJ, on January 25, 2017.  For three decades Steve was the “silent broker” of peace talks in the Middle East—”the lone guerilla warrior of peace,” one Israeli politician called him.  In today’s tense, highly charged political environment a significant event like Steve’s passing gets lost in the higher profile headlines. See NYT obituary.  We write this note and accompanying column to let more people know about Steve’s important life.

In 2010, during a meeting at a major Washington DC law firm discussing aspects of a transpartisan foreign policy, Steve told of an encounter he had with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.  Steve said he was riding with Mr. Mubarak in the President’s helicopter.  They flew over a cemetery and the President pointed out a woman standing on a grave site next to a make-shift tent that obviously served as her home.  The President pointed down at the woman and said, according to Steve, “with all the power I might have I have nothing to tell that woman down there.”

Steve told the story, as he told so many stories, to illustrate the gulf between the lofty world of policy makers and implementers and the people whose lives the policies shape.  Steve spent his life bridging gaps between Israelis and Arabs, powerful and fragile, rich and poor.  Only by building trust, he argued and showed, can peace be created.  He wrote in the preface to our book, Voice of the People: The Transpartisan Imperative in American Life:

The lesson from the Middle East is clear: there can be no peace without trust and no trust without peace and both trust and peace require personal subjective contact among individual people of strong competing loyalties.

The key to trust is doing things together.  It is engaging people in common purposes.  When people come together in real engagement, their conflicts and differences start to melt away sometimes very quickly.

As an advisor and mentor to us in the writing of, and as the author of the preface to, our book, Steve provided us with invaluable wisdom in the power of his thinking, the courage of his actions and the model of the life he led.  We will miss him and his counsel.

Read Remembering a Transpartisan Pioneer to learn more about how Stephen’s wisdom and presence impacted our life and work. Then check out the full preface from “The Voice of the People: The Transpartisan Imperative in American Life” written by Stephen P. Cohen.

Transpartisan Note #37

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

On March 7^th one hundred US Senators, the Senate’s entire membership, asked the leading law enforcement officials of the Trump administration for help in ending “the deeply troubling series of anonymous bomb threats made against … buildings affiliated with Jewish organizations or institutions across the country.”

The Senators’ letter to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and FBI Director James Comey said, “In addition to reports of incidents at JCCs and Jewish Day Schools, there have been incidents at cemeteries in both St. Louis and Philadelphia involving the desecration of Jewish headstones. This is completely unacceptable and un-American.”

Our friends who are proprietors of one of the desecrated cemeteries tell us that in the aftermath of the attack, which damaged or destroyed several hundred headstones, they have received an outpouring of encouragement and support, including financial support, from around the world.

Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, humanist and other spiritual supporters and others worldwide continue to offer condolences, solidarity and help. In addition, local police and the FBI engaged in an immediate and vigorous investigation, and helped to restore the damaged areas.

The outpouring of resistance to anti-Semitism from across the country, exemplified by the unanimous disapproval of anti-Semitism by the United States Senate, and around the world joins President Trump’s February 21^st statement that “The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible and are painful and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil.”

We see this nearly universal condemnation of anti-Semitism as a profound expression of the transpartisan impulse that animates our nation and its people.

Transpartisan Note #36

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

And the Academy Award [Beatty hesitates] for Best Picture ‘. . . La La Land . . .’   The marvelous Faye Dunaway delivered, likely, the most memorable words, ‘La La Land’,  of her nearly sixty years of memorable performances.

Her escort for the moment, the hesitating Warren Beatty, stared transfixed like a deer in headlights or a passenger on a bus watching two cars careen in slow motion toward an inevitable crash.

For about a minute and a half La La Land producers Jordan Horowitz, Marc Platt, and Fred Berger, delivered uplifting thanks for the recognition of their achievement by the Academy.

Then Horowitz said ‘What?  You guys, I’m sorry, no.  There’s a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won Best Picture.’  He said, ‘I’m going to be really proud to hand this to my friends from Moonlight.’  You can read the transcript .

Adele Romanski, a Moonlight producer said, ‘It is so humbling to be standing up here with, hopefully, still the La La crew? No, O.K., they’re gone, but it’s very humbling to be up here.’

Host Jimmy Kimmel said, ‘Why can’t we just give out a whole bunch of them?’

New York Times film Critic A. O. Scott captured the moment’s essence.  ‘The envelope mix-up was painful, but it brought to the stage two directors in their 30s with five features between them and reminded the audience that Damien Chazelle (La La Land director) and Barry Jenkins (Moonlight director) are not enemies.

‘The grace with which the La La Land producers (Jordan Horowitz, in particular) handled the handoff — and the poise with which Mr. Jenkins and his producer, Adele Romanski, received the belated honor for Moonlight — should quell the facile polarization that followed the two movies throughout the awards season.’

Quell facile polarization.  That states the transpartisan promise.  Leading up to the Oscar mix-up-moment, partisans of each picture struggled, argued, fought for and against the movies’ two quite different pictures of America.

After the moment, recrimination and retaliation took up a lot of the time, energy and human resources spent reacting to the event.  At its core the Oscar mix-up reminds us that more than controversy exists between even fierce partisans.

Oscar’s transpartisan moment points toward broadening our political discourse to include the aspirations of the 50 to 70% of American’s alienated (somewhat to strongly) from our politics.  Each event contains the possibility of more than conflict.

Transpartisan Note #35

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

Twelve days ago Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, former California governor, released a video attack on gerrymandering called ‘Why Congress Is Worse Than Herpes’.  Since then the video, released on ATTN: (pronounced ‘attention’), has received 22,237,520 views.  The people are interested.

In the video Schwarzenegger makes three key points: 1) Congress is rigged—of 265 California congressional campaigns between 2002 and 2010, party control changed hands in only one district (voters nationally return nearly 95% of incumbents); 2) gerrymandering—partisan deals dividing voters into reliably Democratic or Republican districts—protects incumbents; 3) gerrymandering can be terminated—California’s 2008 Proposition 11, creating the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, and 2010 Proposition 20, assigning Congressional districting to the Redistricting Commission, changed the game in California.

According to the Weekly Standard, Nov 24, 2008, the 2008 initiative received support from ‘A range of good government types from across the political spectrum [that] joined the Yes on 11 campaign.  These included groups as diverse as the AARP, the League of Women Voters and the Chamber of Commerce.’  It also included the support of then-Governor Schwarzenegger and former Democratic governor Gray Davis.  The Democratic Party and Congressional leaders opposed the initiative and the Republican Party failed to support it.  Find a list of supporters and opponents here. Find details of the current California redistricting system here.  An initiative in 2010 expanded the Commission’s work to include mapping California’s United States Congressional Districts.

In 2012, 71% of California voters supported the Commission-created California Senate district maps when opponents sought to reject them by referendum.  In June 2015, the United States Supreme Court upheld an Arizona initiative and ruled that independent redistricting commissions were permitted under the U.S. Constitution.  Story here.  In addition to California and Arizona, five other states, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Hawaii and New Jersey, have forms of independent districting commissions.

The Schwarzenegger Internet campaign on behalf of ending gerrymandering seeks to spread initiatives like the independent redistricting commission in California.  The former Governor, appearing with representatives of Common Cause and The League of Women Voters, laid out his analysis at a public forum at the USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy, housed at the Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California, on Jan. 31, 2017, in a discussion on national political reform and redistricting.

We think working to end gerrymandering offers a meaningful task to those seeking a voice for the fifty to seventy percent of eligible American voters alienated from the current electoral system.  There is transpartisan work to be done.   Terminating gerrymandering is excellent transpartisan work.

(Photo of Arnold Schwarzeneggar at the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference by Unclimatechange and licensed CC BY 2.0.)

Transpartisan Note #34

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

Google Ronald Reagan, Hubert Humphrey. You find Ronald Reagan’s 1948 endorsement of liberal Hubert Humphrey for Senator from Minnesota. Audio here.

Text here.

Excerpt below:

“This is Ronald Reagan, speaking to you from Hollywood … more than a little impatient with those promises the Republicans made before they got control of Congress a couple of years ago …

“The Republican Speaker of the House, said, … ‘We Republicans intend to work for a real increase in income for everybody by encouraging more production and lower prices without impairing wages or working conditions.’ … But what actually happened?  The profits of corporations have doubled, while workers’ wages have increased by only one quarter.

“Now think of the contrast with the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, which reported a net profit of $210 million dollars, after taxes, for the first half of 1948.

“Since the 80th Congress took over …

• Labor has been handcuffed by the vicious Taft-Hartley Law.
• Social Security benefits have been snatched away from almost a million …
• Fair employment practices … have been abandoned.
• Veterans’ pleas for low cost homes have been ignored …
• Tax reduction bills have been passed to benefit the higher income brackets alone.
• In the false name of economy millions of children have been deprived of milk once provided through the Federal School Lunch Program.

“This was the payoff of the Republicans’ promises.

“And this is why we must have new faces in the Congress of the United States,

“Democratic faces.”

Reagan began in politics as a liberal Democrat, which he remained until 1960, helping to found the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, campaigning for public office for Hubert Humphrey, and supporting the New and Fair deals of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

Max Kampelman, a longtime liberal Democrat in the Hubert Humphrey tradition, served as arms negotiator for both Presidents Carter and Reagan.  He found Reagan to be quite open on arms control. He offers the following story of his appointment as arms negotiator by Reagan as evidence.

The president told him, as he tells it, that:

“Secretary of State George Shultz had suggested he listen to an idea from me.  I presented it in summary form.  White House chief of staff Jim Baker, saying that Shultz had made a contrary suggestion earlier in the week, said he agreed with Shultz and did not support my proposal.

“Ed Meese spoke up, as did two or three others in the room, all agreeing with Baker.  I did not take this as a personal affront in any way, and had not expected to get even this far with my idea. But the president, sensing disappointment I did not feel, spoke up.  ‘Don’t pay any attention to these fellows, Max,’ he said.  ‘Not a single one of them was ever a Democrat.’”

According to Reagan biographer John Patrick Diggins, in Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History, “A week later Kampelman received a call from the president telling him he had been appointed chief arms negotiator for the upcoming Geneva conference.” (link)

We believe that effectively addressing significant problems such as arms control and the avoidance of war requires the kind of integration of skills, philosophy and points of view exemplified by Ronald Reagan in his choice of Max Kampelman as arms control negotiator. We call this Transpartisan.

(As a work of the U.S. federal government, the above image is in the public domain.)

Transpartisan Note #33

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

U.S. policy experts widely believe that the world order requires strong American engagement. When American engagement becomes weak or uncertain, the order weakens, and aggression and disorder start to become visible and grow.

The Cold War underscored this belief. ‘Containment’ of Soviet expansion won bipartisan support and dominated U.S. policy until the early 1990s, when the Cold War ended. 9/11 revealed new security concerns coming from radical Islamists in the tribal societies of the larger Middle East. Radical, tribal, and transnational forces (outside established national boundaries in pursuit of non- or anti- state objectives) presented, and continue to present, new challenges. No bipartisan policy has emerged to address this new global reality. Very small non-state actors can undermine a nation’s security, both perceived and actual.

Large-scale military initiatives, in Afghanistan and Iraq, clearly failed to solve the problem. Persistent resistance in those countries reminded people of Vietnam. The failure of bipartisan consensus on ensuring global security in this new world of ‘weak states’ leaves the question: how to sustain U.S. engagement in the world order without over-reaching military initiatives?

Under pressure from the Afghan and Iraqi governments and people, President Bush set in motion reducing and President Obama reduced the military commitment to those countries. ISIS stepped into the vacuum, and the self-proclaimed Caliphate created a bloodbath. In Syria, President Obama drew a red line in the sand and then ignored it, successfully eliminating Assad’s chemical weapons program but failing to depose Assad. Russia stepped into the vacuum, and Syria became a bloodbath. For more detail, see Politico.

We think the bloodbaths are flowing, largely, because there is no longer any coherent American presence engaging the underlying forces shaping the world that is emerging. This world is balkanized by persisting sub-group loyalties that retard development of strong nation-states.

Obama seemed to be disengaging America from the global order, and Trump—questioning NATO, withdrawing from trade agreements, and repeating his commitment to America first—seems to be continuing that policy. The world wants America to sustain its global engagement without an unsustainable military presence. We need dialogue and debate on a sustainable policy. We see two potential possibilities for new, sustainable engagement.

One focus is military. If and how we deploy permanent military forces in key strategic locations—as we now do in Europe and in South Korea—is one possible commitment to explore that could play an important role in a new engagement, maintaining order. It is especially true in the larger Middle East. Egypt and Afghanistan are possible venues for this. We need a transpartisan — and bi-partisan — debate about this.

A second focus is civic: a strategy  for empowering citizens to resist insurgents that threaten them.  The key to empowerment, as the work of Hernando De Soto argues in the first issue of The Transpartisan Review, is ownership (see Fighting Terrorism By Empowering The Poor).  De Soto’s work shows that when ownership is made formal, citizens will have a stake in societies for the first time, and they will protect what they own from insurgents.  (This belief is widely observed even in the regions threatened by radical Islam.)

In developing new security policy we think it is important to consider expanding De Soto’s ownership concept from peasant land to schools, wells, hospitals, and other community ‘properties’. Strategies for this will likely require active participation of civil society organizations, from both left and the right, that are committed to both order and freedom. This is a large, but essential, transpartisan issue, on both foreign and domestic agendas, whose outlines can be glimpsed in current policy tensions and struggles.

For an additional look at transpartisan foreign policy, please read A Policy Of Conflict, Competition & Cooperation by Charles Hauss which appeared in our first issue of The Transpartisan Review.

(Photo by Eferante and licensed CC BY 3.0.)

Transpartisan Note #32

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

In his first days, President Trump has revealed the weaknesses of policy made by Presidential tweets and invoked corrective responses from other institutions both public and private.  In the process he has demonstrated the difficulties of governing as a minority leader, the limitations of applying the business model to government, and the limited impact of rhetoric on events.

The President’s motivation is no secret: he wanted to ‘come out of the gate’ at full speed and showing maximum strength. Full speed often means ignoring process.  Instead of showing strength, he got reviews like this one from broadly respected Republican power broker James Baker, reported by Politico, “The rollout here was deficient; we have to acknowledge that.” He has to do a much better job, Politico reports Baker saying, of working with the other power centers of Washington—Congress and the Cabinet—before unveiling disruptive new policies.

The President’s disinterest in process—how to vet new policies to ensure conformity to legal precedents, inform stakeholders, and minimize unintended consequences that stimulate avoidable political opposition—resulted in procedural missteps and resistance from multiple sources.

The immigration policy read like something designed for political reasons and indifferent to impacts on real people.  Barring green card holders, who are here legally, is an obvious example, and was quickly reversed.  No notice was given to employers employing large numbers of immigrants, such as in Silicon Valley.  They pushed back, citing potential innovation and competitive losses, creating headlines such as “96 Companies Just Told Trump Where He Can Shove His Muslim Ban“.

Failures in consultation began with failure to fully coordinate with Cabinet appointees, who, according to news reports often denied by the White House, pushed back. On immigration policy, implemented for national security, Homeland Security Secretary (formerly General) John Kelly seems to have taken positions differing from the White House on green card holders, ultimately excepting them from the order, and to have insisted that the order was not a ban and temporary, while White House spokespersons called it a ban and failed to deny that it was intended to be permanent.

A federal court in Washington State issued an emergency stay of the Presidential order. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to lift the stay and will decide whether or not it will continue until the full case is heard. It seems likely the issue will go, sooner or later, to the Supreme Court for resolution.

These corrective measures are coming from our institutions, making corrections to the course set by an inexperienced President.  As a minority President (well under one-third of age eligible voters checked off Trump) who believes in business principles (market the product, the manageable downside is bankruptcy) and uses advertising (insistent rhetorical messages—the judge is a rogue) to ‘handle’ image problems and boost selling,he is running into unexpected political headwinds. He seems to be taking, or the institutions are forcing, corrective action on process.  Substance of disruptive new policies remains contentious and minimally addressed.

If unrecognized, the transpartisan reality—that most American feel alienated from the current political process, even, or maybe especially, when controlled by an outsider like Trump–will impede action in every direction. The transpartisan vision—including the widest possible expression of interests in all decision making—needs support from both inside and outside our formal governmental institutions as part of getting successfully through this contentious time.

Transpartisan Note #31

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

“I have a running war with the media. They’re scum. They are horrible people. . . . [T]he media is the opposition party in many ways,” Trump says of the media. “You are a liar,” the media says of Trump. More eyeballs watched each. The attention boosted the ratings of both.

We think they often speak different languages.

Some disagreements over ‘facts,’ we think, come from different modes of communication. The media speak in a literal, objective language, the traditional political language, while Trump meanders between a literal and a metaphorical, subjective language that requires ‘decoding’ to see ‘facts.’

One recent fight raged over crowd size. Rules from previous fights blocked official estimates. We think Inaugural Trump felt like a million bucks, and he subjectively saw a million people. The more objective Washington Monument camera saw many fewer people. The fight came. The time, the ground, the intention, etc., of the pictures, all fed the fray. The fight revealed divergent views: “facts” and ‘facts.’

“How to Listen to Donald Trump Every Day for Years,” by John McWhorter (NYT, 1/21/17), gives pointers for peace of mind that fit our sense of Trump, Trumpian talking, and transpartisan listening.

“Mr. Trump talks,” says Mr. McWhorter, “the way any number of people would over drinks, and many of us might be surprised to see elements of that style in our own downtime speech if transcribed.”

“Still, we wonder,” he continued, ”what is someone with this after-hours baggy way of talking doing in the Oval Office?  The reality is, it was only a matter of time.  America’s relationship to language has become more informal by the decade since the 1960s, just as it has to dress, sexual matters, culinary habits, dance and much else.”

Here are some Trumpian era reactions called to our attention since publication of the first issue of The Transpartisan Review on January 20:

• “The Trump Truth: If You Can Handle It,” by Billy Phillips, the Kabbalah Student, (1/24/17): “Whatever you see wrong in others, whatever it is, make no mistake — none whatsoever — that the negative trait and insolent behavior that you are witnessing is also inside of you and that is why it angers you so much.”
• “A Completely Different Perspective On Trump’s Presidency. This Will Make You Think,” by Bernhard Guenther, Collective Evolution, (1/17/17): “Here’s the thing from a basic Jungian perspective: Trump is your shadow, America, a reflection of your unconscious…”
• “Trump and a Post-Truth World: An Evolutionary Self Correction,” by philosopher Ken Wilber: Both sides feel pain and suffering from a “much too narrow view, …a more expansive stance …allow(s) one to work on whatever side one wishes . . .[and make] self-correcting evolutionary realignments…”
• George Monbiot writes in The Guardian (11/23/16): “The failure by mainstream political parties to produce a new and persuasive economic narrative, which does not rely on sustaining impossible levels of growth and generating illusory jobs, provides a marvelous opening for demagogues everywhere.” Also for Transpartisans?
• “#Brexit, the Populist Surge and the Crisis of Complexity,” on the Paul Arbair, website (7/5/16): “There is indeed a growing sense that political and economic leaders across the world are increasingly at the mercy of economic and geopolitical forces beyond their control . . . leading to a sort of slow-motion ‘sophisticated state failure’” (all state institutions work well, but nothing gets done).
• A hospice social worker in New England writes, “Stop attacking Trump. He is vulnerable, cornered, and frightened. He needs comforting. I can’t say this publicly or my lefty pals will burn me at the stake.”
• A (maybe transpartisan?) humorist writes, “Madonna attacking Trump? Don’t be silly. That’s the way New Yorkers make love.”
• A partisan says, “Stop calling him Hitler. He is obviously the Red Queen. ‘You’re Fired’ is the new ‘Off With Their Heads!’”

Such comments and others do not fit neatly on a left-right continuum.

Some Trump/media exchanges feature fights about ‘facts’ and ‘alternative facts.’ Some media claim Trump lives in a ‘post-fact’ world. According to the website BrainyQuote, Will Rogers, the American Jon Stewart between WWI and WWII said “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”

Keeping in mind that this Trump/media fact fight is talking over drinks rather than speaking for the ages might make the words easier to take and more understandable. Listening this way might lead us to broader, transpartisan conversation — for example, about the rise of the responsive state; more ‘work,’ with fewer ‘jobs;’ shared ownership of public spaces. The Trump vs. media debate opens up discussion beyond the politically normal.

(Photo by Gage Skidmore and licensed CC BY-SA 2.0.)