A recipe for cooling down American politics

A recipe for cooling down American politics
“The best way to end a civil war is to stop it before it happens.”

As a practitioner engaged with peace processes around the world for the past four decades, I am asked with increasing frequency an unsettling question: Are we headed toward civil war here in these United States?

Such a question isn’t preposterous. In other places I have worked, deliberate toxic polarization — exclusion, political control and the dehumanizing of adversaries — has contributed to repeating cycles of armed conflict. Once unleashed, wars become very hard to end.

We are not exempt.

Lederach, John Paul. “A Recipe for Cooling down American Politics.” The Washington Post, August 15, 2024.

Originally published on The Washington Post.

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