Richard Davies is a journalist and podcaster. He runs the podcast consultancy, DaviesContent, and co-hosts “How Do We Fix It?” and “Let’s Find Common Ground”.
Most of us who keep up with news and current events are at times frustrated with how the media covers politics, race and culture. All too often news coverage is dominated by clashes, controversies, contests and celebrities rather than reports that include potential solutions. The emphasis is on what’s wrong rather than how things might be put right. So it’s no surprise that a large national meeting in Gettysburg during four days in July passed by almost unnoticed by the mainstream media.
The Braver Angels convention was an unusual gathering of nearly 700 people— Republicans and Democrats in approximately equal numbers. The movement’s co-founder and Braver Angels President David Blankenhorn told delegates they were at “the largest gathering so far this century of Red and Blue American leaders coming together in equal numbers and on equal terms to bridge our divides and save our country.”
Most of us who showed up spent up to 15 hours each day attending plenary sessions, breakout meetings and small group conversations. It was exhausting, but exhilarating. Delegates ate together and slept in college dorms. Some said they enjoyed being in a “safe space for disagreements” as they listened to those from the other side without feeling they had to bite their tongues or check their own opinions at the door.
On the morning of the final day, Republican Governor Spencer Cox of Utah was given a standing ovation after bounding onstage and telling the crowd “you are my people.” Cox and other speakers warned of the threats to democracy from extreme partisanship. “Rights without responsibility and sacrifice leads to chaos and a house divided that cannot long stand,” said the Governor.
“The radical selfishness we see today on both the extreme right and the extreme left is rotting our increasingly fragile republic," he added.
As this year’s new Chair of the National Governors Association, Cox spoke of his plans to launch an initiative called Healthy Conflict and Disagree Better. Governors of both parties, says the Association, will explore “a more positive and optimistic way of working through our problems.”
The convention was held on the campus of Gettysburg College, 160 years after the three-day battle in July 1863 that changed the course of the Civil War. Gettysburg was also the site of President Lincoln’s famous address.
Braver Angels, originally named Better Angels, was formed in 2016. In the introduction to this year’s agenda, the organizers wrote: “On the grounds of a great battlefield of our Civil War, we’ll meet to prevent another civil war— a war in which we tear ourselves apart with anger and distrust.”
Braver Angels is part of a growing national movement to bridge political divides. Bridge Alliance, Bridging Movement Alliance Council (BMAC), Listen First Project and Common Ground Committee are among leading innovators in the space. After facing criticism that Braver Angels had failed to fully take account of other bridging groups, the movement formed Braver Networks. Dozens of organizations have joined the outreach effort, including StoryCorps and All Sides to BridgeUSA and the Institute for Local Government.
Much of the work of Braver Angels is done by determined volunteers in their local chapters. While some regions are stronger than others, training sessions and group meetings have been held in many states. One example is “Red-Blue workshops” where small evenly divided groups of conservatives and liberals gather for a series of structured exercises aimed at helping participants “clarify disagreements, reduce stereotyped thinking and discover common values.”
Overall, the mood of the four-day Gettysburg convention was surprisingly hopeful given the enormity of the task before the delegates. But in the words of one Braver Angels leader, the first big step in pushing back against today’s rigid polarization and fierce negativity is to recognize that the nation is facing a crisis.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.