Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

When the irresistible force meets the immovable object

Red and blue glow sticks crossing

The authors have lived through many political iterations of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, waging relentless political warfare against one another.

MirageG/Getty Images

Blades is co-founder ofLiving Room Conversations, Moms Rising andMoveOn. Benko is co-founder and general counsel to Washington Power and Light as well as F1R3FLY.io.

Back in a previous millennium, when we were much younger and carefree, a certain paradoxical question was au courant: “What happens when the irresistible force meets the immovable object?”

As it happens, we know something about this.


Joan Blades, an infamous progressive, has unleashed at least three irresistible forces in her long career.

First, she and her husband, Wes Boyd, via their company Berkeley Systems/After Dark, created the iconic flying toaster screen saver (which prevented burn-in on the cathode ray tubes of millions of pre-flat-panel-display PCs (creating the defining desktop aesthetic of the 1990s). It is “a cherished piece of computing history.”

Joan, again with her husband Wes, then created MoveOn, bringing in half a million underrepresented citizens to fight the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

Clinton survived the impeachment trial in the Senate, proving himself unremovable if not, necessarily, immovable. Then MoveOn moved on to attempt to avert America’s feckless invasion of Iraq, another immovable object.

Joan then went on to co-found Moms Rising to advocate for heretical propositions such as a child care tax credit to lift millions of children out of poverty. It recently passed the majority Republican House and is now pending in the majority Democratic Senate.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Turns out that voting for motherhood, like apple pie, is good politics as well as good policy! Who knew?

Notorious paleoconservative Ralph Benko, a card-carrying member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (low serial number!), must ipso facto represent the immovable object. He was called by The Washington Post’s Gene Weingarten “the second most conservative man in the world” for his gold standard advocacy.

Ralph presents a pretty good case study in the power of knuckle dragging to induce … immovability.

The two of us have lived through many political iterations of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, waging relentless political warfare against one another. We have learned a few valuable lessons pertinent to the current trench warfare between the far left and far right.

We, inadvertently, adduced proof of Bohr’s postulate (named after the great physicist Niels Bohr): How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.”

It also is a permutation of Bohr’s motto on his self-designed family crest: “Contraria sunt complementa.” Opposites are complementary.

This proposition may seem paradoxical. Because, you know, it is.

Rather than one side or the other prevailing, the discovery of a paradox opens the possibility of transformation.

This is by no means a counsel of compromise, certainly not of compromising our principles. It simply creates the possibility of transformation rather than domination.

Joan, for the better part of a decade, has been off on a new quest, having co-founded Living Room Conversations, in which Ralph participated for several years before refocusing his energies into restoring the internet to its conservative communitarian ethos.

Joan’s purpose in what is perhaps the most dangerously (to the entrenched power elites) radical of her ventures to date? To generate a civil and productive dialogue between the left and the right, inviting a healthy competition rather than guerre à outrance (all out war).

We of the left and right are talking past one another. During this political cycle Joan is shepherdessing a national series of local conversations on trust in elections.

Joan’s experience at LRC strongly suggests that there are many areas of potentially fruitful mutual collaboration, without either side compromising an iota on cherished principles. There are many issues ripe for a cooperative resolution!

Let’s find these and get a virtuous cycle going!

We offer you the distillation of our collective four score and seven years of political field experience at scale. Use Bohr’s postulate.

How wonderful that you have met with a paradox.

Now you have some hope of making progress.

Join our cause and there’s a fighting chance of cutting the Gordian knot of the angry tribalism that is now confounding our politics. To learn how you can join the cause, contact joan@livingroomconversations.org.

Read More

Bridgebuilding Effectiveness

Hands together in unison.

Getty Images, VioletaStoimenova

Bridgebuilding Effectiveness

In a time of deep polarization and democratic fragility, bridgebuilding has become a go-to approach for fostering civic cohesion in the U.S. Yet questions persist: Does it work? And how do we know?

With declining trust, rising partisanship, and even political violence, many are asking what the role of dialogue might be in meeting democracy’s demands. The urgency is real—and so is the need for more strategic, evidence-based approaches.

Keep ReadingShow less
The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same
a red hat that reads make america great again

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

Recently, while listening to a podcast, I came across the term “reprise” in the context of music and theater. A reprise is a repeated element in a performance—a song or scene returning to reinforce themes or emotions introduced earlier. In a play or film, a familiar melody might reappear, reminding the audience of a previous moment and deepening its significance.

That idea got me thinking about how reprise might apply to the events shaping our lives today. It’s easy to believe that the times we are living through are entirely unprecedented—that the chaos and uncertainty we experience are unlike anything before. Yet, reflecting on the nature of a reprise, I began to reconsider. Perhaps history does not simply move forward in a straight line; rather, it cycles back, echoing familiar themes in new forms.

Keep ReadingShow less
Following Jefferson: Promoting Intergenerational Understanding Through Constitution-Making

An illustration depicting the U.S. Constitution and Government.

Getty Images, Douglas Rissing

Following Jefferson: Promoting Intergenerational Understanding Through Constitution-Making

Towards the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson became fatalistic. The prince and poet of the American Revolution brooded—about the future of the country he birthed, to be sure; but also about his health, his finances, his farm, his family, and, perhaps most poignantly, his legacy. “[W]hen all our faculties have left…” he wrote to John Adams in 1822, “[when] every avenue of pleasing sensation is closed, and athumy, debility, and malaise [is] left in their places, when the friends of our youth are all gone, and a generation is risen around us whom we know not, is death an evil?”

The question was rhetorical, of course. But it revealed something about his character. Jefferson was aware that Adams and he—the “North and South poles of the Revolution”—were practically the only survivors of the Revolutionary era, and that a new generation was now in charge of America’s destiny.

Keep ReadingShow less
Defining the Democracy Movement: Francis Johnson
- YouTube

Defining the Democracy Movement: Francis Johnson

The Fulcrum presents The Path Forward: Defining the Democracy Reform Movement. Scott Warren's interview series engages diverse thought leaders to elevate the conversation about building a thriving and healthy democratic republic that fulfills its potential as a national social and political game-changer. This initiative is the start of focused collaborations and dialogue led by The Bridge Alliance and The Fulcrum teams to help the movement find a path forward.

The latest interview of this series took place with Francis Johnson, the founding partner of Communications Resources, a public affairs organization, and the former President of Take Back Our Republic. This non-partisan organization advocates for conservative solutions to campaign finance reform. A veteran of Republican politics, Francis has been at the forefront of structural reform efforts, including initiatives like ranked-choice voting.

Keep ReadingShow less