"America in One Room" study has vital clues to healing our democracy

This study highlights vital information about politics in our country today:

https://www.nytimes.com/…/…/america-one-room-experiment.html - study shows that polarized Americans moderate their views after a weekend of information and discussion with people of other views.

https://www.nytimes.com/…/these-526-voters-represent-americ… - the same study, highlighting how discussions built trust in democracy and empathy.

Having studied civics education in U.S. high schools and its various effects on how people interact with democracy as adults, I can see how these studies point towards useful, healing ideas. Starting at a young age, we can empower classrooms to hold thoughtful discussion with complex issues and compromise-heavy decision-making as a model for a healthy democratic society. As we grow into adults, we can strengthen our skepticism-muscle for sound-bite media, quick-fixes, and vilification of the "other side". As creators, customers, and citizens, we can work towards healthier and more ethical products in media, entertainment, and technology - leveraging our dollars, our labor, our vote, activism, lobbying, nonprofit missions, word-of-mouth, and many kinds of financial, political, and social pressure.

Are you worried about the damage of divided, antagonistic politics? Then wading out of the deep end of our sound-bite-driven media is likely part of the solution. The shore may seem far away, but the only way to get there is to turn in the right direction, keep our heads above water, and keep going.

Democracy is the worst

No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.  - Winston Churchill, speech given before the House of Commons in 1947

After Hurricane Katrina I went down to help do muck-outs - cleaning out all the mud and debris that had flooded peoples houses, the moldy drywall, everything down to the studs. I did this kind of work off and on from then through Hurricane Sandy. We worked with Habitat for Humanity and AmeriCorps, the Mennonites and the Baptists and the Lutherans, some volunteers on college break, some who had retired from owning construction companies and now traveled the nation and did only that. After all the chaos, you could stand in the sturdy framework of an empty house, and as volunteers started to put up walls again, see how life could continue. As I looked for my own first house, I stood in many and thought about how that framework could look, ranging from bare bones, to disaster, to full of life and family.

A functioning government is like a house: a basic sound structure you could see yourself living within, if you can look past the mess.