Polarization is the Word of the Year—But Are We Missing the Real Problem?

Discover a New Way Forward

Is Polarization Really the Problem?

It’s official: "Polarization" is Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year. It’s hard to argue with their choice—division feels like it defines this moment. Media outrage, political fights, and social media hype have made it seem like we’re living in two completely different realities.

But what if polarization isn’t the real problem?

In this week’s episode of Outrage Overload, I sit down with Rich Harwood, founder of the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, who argues that our focus on polarization might be blinding us to something deeper: a breakdown of trust, agency, and connection in our communities.

Drawing from his report Civic Virus: Why Polarization is a Misdiagnosis, Rich challenges us to rethink the anger and disconnection we see around us. He shares practical tools for how communities can move beyond fear and frustration to build real solutions—together.

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Why This Matters

Polarization makes headlines because it’s loud. But Rich explains how deeper forces—like fear, anxiety, and a loss of agency—are what really drive our sense of disconnection.

As Rich puts it, the way forward isn’t just about talking to each other. It’s about working together on what really matters—whether it’s schools, mental health, or community safety.

Listen Now: A Conversation About Hope and Action

This episode is about more than naming the problem—it’s about finding ways to move forward, rebuild trust, and reclaim a sense of agency in our lives.

If you’re tired of the noise and looking for practical ways to make a difference, this conversation is for you.

Spread the Word
If this episode resonates, share it with a friend, neighbor, or colleague. The more we turn down the outrage and focus on solutions, the closer we get to rebuilding the trust and connection we’ve lost.

Until next time,
David Beckemeyer
Host, Outrage Overload Podcast

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2024 in Outrage: Voices of Insight from Outrage Overload

Selected quotes from 2024 episodes:  

You know, people will say, "Yeah, but what about, you know, whatever, you know, what about the fact that the right is, you know, more extreme or they lie more, right?” Or what about, well, all of the “what abouts?”

All of the pieces of this puzzle that we're kind of trapped in are true and valid. They're kind of sources of our division, but none of them alone. Could lead to what we're in, which is a 60 year pattern of escalating enmity and hate for the other side. And so it's important to understand that there's a constellation of things that are working, and they work in what we call vicious cycles.

-Peter Coleman, Episode 29

Democracy is a conflict management system. It's basic rule is we count heads rather than breaking heads. If you are looking for a system that imposes your ideology on unwilling constituencies, it’s not your choice of polity. It is an imperfect system to deal with an imperfect world in a way that that the majority has a hard time, or at least a harder time, imposing their will on everyone.

For whatever reason, or whatever reasons, it seems to be hard for people to accept these days.

-Kevin Smith, America on the Knife’s Edge

What I've learned about critical thinking is that it's not enough to know how, you have to want to do it. And that requires us to back up and be honest with ourselves. But I've also learned that in that process, our, our emotions get in the way.

Our emotions are why we believe what we believe often, right? We hear it from people we trust, we experience something. And so once we attach to it, especially if our identity is attached to it, we run with it. I start with training on and I teach students how to evaluate these claims, how to think about thinking, how to think about where their beliefs come from and the evidence for their beliefs and confidence for their beliefs and proportioning it.

The point is evidence, right? Evidence matters.

-Melanie Trecek-King, Episode 44

When you're passively consuming, you're really not making any intentional effort. It's flowing over you and social media, people are talking about it, you're hearing it as you pass and in passing.

And that's actually really risky. That's part of what fuels the reason people are so bugged by the news, because they're allowing themselves to be yanked around by the algorithms that. Are intentionally trying to upset them.

-Julie Rose, Episode 50

One can see the other side as worse and more contributing to the divide, the toxicity of the divides, while feeling it's very important to work on reducing those divides because conflict is important.

Conflict very complex. And that should tell us that we should take some humility about the nature of the divides and really not let our animosity towards the other side, get in the way of us working on the problem.

And groups are asymmetrical in a conflict. They can be hard to compare. For example, there's educational polarization. There's the fact that liberals really control all of the institutions in society, academia, mainstream media, entertainment media.

So just to say that the, the conflicts can be quite complex and we can be prone to seeing the conflict how we want to see it, and using that as an excuse to not help. Whereas I think we should embrace some humility and ask, “what can we do on our side to solve these things?” No matter who we think is worse in these things.

-Zachary Elwood, America on the Knife’s edge.

If you start to believe that half the country is either racist, stupid, a woke sheep, a whatever, some other kind of bigot, whatever it is, then you're going to face a really uncomfortable sort of question about whether democracy is still the right form of government. This is where people get into these sort of ideas about, well, we would need a national divorce.

Okay, really divorce is not an option here. So that's one option. Most people don't want that option. The only other option is to get back to a place where we understand our co citizens in this democracy are capable of reasoned thought, to commit ourselves to understanding where they're coming from and why we disagree. That's a much bigger and more important project than just “I'm going to figure out the humanity in this person who disagrees with me.”

So if you're with me so far, the thing that keeps us judging people who disagree, this person's right, the demonization, the dismissal, that is certainty. It is some belief, value, or principle that we're holding on to as inviolable. This thing cannot be questioned or touched.

I don't even speak about it. It's so obvious, I won't even say it out loud. That is, it's essentially the thing that gives us permission to write off everyone else.

-Ilana Redston, Episode 41

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New This Week in Outrage Episode!

It’s everything the Outrage Overload podcast is not. It’s not edited. It’s not scripted. It’s lightly researched. It’s David and Lisa talking about this week in outrage, what was in the news, in the memes, and maybe finding some backstory with a humorous (at least to us) twist.