Welcome to The Fulcrum’s daily weekday e-newsletter where insiders and outsiders to politics are informed, meet, talk, and act to repair our democracy and make it live and work in our everyday lives.
Ask Joe: Keeping the peace while speaking the truth
Hi Joe,
I thought the question in the last article from Skeptical was interesting, but not what I have a problem with. I have so many people that I need to talk to about things that bother me but I wouldn’t think of doing it because I don’t want to make them mad. There are already so many angry people, why make it worse?
Joe Biden: The first Cold War president since Ronald Reagan
By any measure, this has been a momentous week for global politics. President Biden’s surprise trip to Kyiv, his “freedom” speech in Warsaw, the visit of China’s top diplomat to Moscow, and Vladimir Putin’s decision to suspend Russian participation in the last remaining nuclear arms treaty with the U.S. are all signs of deepening big-power tensions.
This coincides with the first anniversary of the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War Two. In the early hours of February 24 last year, Putin’s tanks rolled across Ukraine’s borders.
A Question of Respect: An important book for 2023
A Question of Respect: Bringing Us Together in a Deeply Divided Nation was published earlier this year. The need to address toxic popular and political culture is being recognized by people across the political spectrum. Ed Goeas and Celinda Lake are pollsters and strategists that have worked together to create joint Battleground Polls for more than thirty years. Ed is a Republican and Celinda is a Democrat.
One thing I love about their book is they not only work together to better understand public sentiment, they also really like each other. They disagree about many things and still respect and trust each other. They make a very strong argument that we’d be a more successful nation and happier by far if we learned how to make this a more common occurrence.
Podcast: Hate, undone with Daryl Davis
"When two enemies are talking, they're not fighting." When Daryl Davis was ten, he didn’t understand hate yet. But then he was the only black scout in a parade to honor Paul Revere’s ride to Concord, when he began getting hit by bottles. It was then that he formed a question in his mind that he’s spent much of a lifetime answering: “How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?”
Failing to find his answer in books and history, as an adult and an accomplished musician, he realized who better to ask than a member of an organization formed around the premise—the KKK. So began our guest’s extraordinary story, in which a black man befriended over 200 KKK members, starting with a grand wizard. We’ll learn how his improbable, impossible, openhearted journey can light our way.
