Moving Past the Fault Lines of Yesterday

Democracy doesn’t just thrive when people vote together; it thrives when people build together.

Decades of civic engagement and democracy work increasingly feel like we focused on the wrong output indicators. Democracy works when we all own it. We can get people to vote by enraging and fragmenting them, but that doesn’t mean we’re moving toward a democracy where we’re more effective at working together.

The deepest divides and oldest fault lines in American politics are increasingly dysfunctional for everyone. As a result, our times are calling us to look at powerful new alignments in our culture and politics; leading us to reorganize advocacy work beyond traditional partisan divides. We are faced with a set of challenges that require us to rethink how we do advocacy without animosity.

A really interesting interview with Suzanne Mettler, a political scientist at Cornell University and author of Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide That Threatens Democracy, made me think more deeply about all the fault lines and researchers discussing them, including work on race, religion, education, class, geography, and generation.

Several of these voter analyses track with the 2008 entrenchment and fallout of the new fault lines. Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics by David E. Campbell, Geoffrey Layman, and John Green discusses how American society is becoming markedly more secular, and how this shift is reshaping the nation’s political landscape. Many analyses also trace connections to the Great Recession, Obama’s election, and the rise of the Tea Party.

Clearly, something happened to American political culture (and therefore to advocacy) over the past two decades. We got exceptionally good at mobilizing opposition at the exact moment our political system rewarded division. Our culture strained, and our tools evolved for microtargeting, algorithmic amplification, and threat-based messaging. We mastered the application of political organizing tools, with election after election breaking roughly 50-50. But in perfecting the machinery of resistance, we may have accelerated the very fractures we sought to heal.

The unity cultural cancer was almost mathematical in its precision: rural economies struggled to recover from 2008 while urban centers thrived. Religious and secular worldviews mapped onto geography with increasing clarity. Technology gave us the ability to slice the electorate into ever-finer segments, optimizing for engagement through outrage. Our advocacy tactics evolved to match; becoming more adversarial, more targeted, more effective at mobilizing our base while alienating everyone else. The politics of fear expanded the swath of those afraid, and “civil war” talk seeped into the national consciousness. We built an entire industry around battling. Now we’re discovering that the battlefield itself might be the problem.

The Limits of Reducing Division

Rachel Kleinfeld’s comprehensive analysis offers a sobering reality check: reducing how much Americans dislike each other doesn’t actually reduce antidemocratic attitudes or political violence. The research is unambiguous: “programming that focuses on change at the personal level, but that never links or translates into action at the socio-political level has no discernible effect on peace.”

Even more troubling, adversarial advocacy that amplifies threat perception increases support for antidemocratic action. The most politically engaged people among us, including progressive activists and extreme conservatives, hold the least accurate views of the other side. Politicians have discovered that leveraging polarization works as a strategy. It’s not just emotion; it’s incentive. This isn’t a “both sides” observation.

Fundamentally, we’re trapped in a race where each side’s mobilization tactics justify the other’s escalation. The old playbook isn’t just failing; it’s actively making things worse.

The AI Disruption Window

But here’s what makes this moment different: so much is in flux. AI is reshaping information flows. Energy systems are being rebuilt. Economic assumptions are being questioned. Post-pandemic social patterns haven’t solidified. Parties, politics, economy, and systems in transition are malleable. Multiple states are in recession and have been for several quarters. The Supreme Court is about to pour gasoline on the fire with redistricting.

The wiring can be reconfigured. The question isn’t whether change is coming, it’s whether we’ll shape it intentionally or let it shape us.

Draw Different Lines

What if we stopped organizing along the exhausted axes of rural vs. urban, red vs. blue, secular vs. religious? What if instead we organized around:

• Extraction vs. Regeneration: Who’s taking from communities, and who’s building them?
• Participation vs. Marginalization: Who is being excluded or marginalized by current systems?
• Opacity vs. Transparency: Who profits from hidden systems, and who benefits from openness?
• Isolation vs. Connection: Who gains from keeping us apart, and who thrives when we’re linked?
• Innovation vs. Stagnation: Where are we stuck; in our jobs, infrastructure, or civic institutions? What innovations, technical, civic, and social, can unlock new horizons?

These aren’t abstract principles. They’re practical organizing opportunities. Water systems need repair regardless of partisan affiliation. Data rights affect everyone. Local economies require trust networks that cross traditional divides.

This isn’t about finding mushy middle ground. It’s about building strong civic ligaments; the new connective tissue that allows a body politic to move coherently even when parts are in tension. Not muscle for fighting, but ligaments for coordinated motion.

The proof points hide in plain sight:

• The Electoral Count Act reform of 2022 succeeded where partisan efforts failed, bringing together an unlikely coalition around protecting democratic processes.
• Criminal justice reform in 2018 remains the only lasting national reform because it organized across unexpected alliances.
• The Respect for Marriage Act passed in 2022 by building bridges between conservative religious groups and LGBTQ advocates who found common ground in protecting existing families.

These weren’t victories of moderation; they were victories of reorganization. The organizers found different fault lines that created different coalitions.

Sharing a Question, Not an Answer

How do we reorganize advocacy to build democratic resilience rather than just resistance?

This means developing:

• Assessment frameworks for civic health that measure connection, not just participation
• Convening practices that bring together unlikely allies around shared functions
• Advocacy strategies that build civic metabolism and the ability to process conflict constructively
• Network infrastructure that creates democratic ligaments across traditional divides

We need advocates who see building as urgently as we once saw battling. We need funders willing to invest in civic infrastructure, not just civic opposition. We need practitioners who can hold complexity without collapsing into simplicities.

What Comes Next

The age of opposition built muscle; the age of reconstruction must build ligaments. This isn’t a call to stop fighting injustice. It’s recognition that the fight itself needs different terrain. We need to evolve to thrive in a new environment. Not red vs. blue battlegrounds, but extraction vs. regeneration. Not partisan warriors, but civic metabolists who can process toxicity into energy for change.

Democracy doesn’t just survive when people vote together; it thrives when people build together.

Will you join us in exploring what that looks like? Connect with us to learn more about building networks that strengthen democracy.