How a Mediator Approaches the Entrenched Positions of Quadrants in the U.S. Political Compass
If not compromise, can we find an option better than civil war?
How would mediators approach the factions that constitute the U.S. political compass? Having been listed for 5 years as a certified mediator in the orderly State of Utah, allow me to explain. A mediator would attempt to help factions create policies that would get past the stated positions and attempt to meet the main interests of each of the four parties/quadrants.
Lessons From a Master Negotiator and Mediator
William Ury is a cofounder of Harvard’s program on negotiation. He is author of Getting Past No: Negotiating in Difficult Situations) and a new book Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) in an Age of Conflict. In an interview on the Tim Ferris Show, episode 721, Ury shares this account:
I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard like that where it just turns out to be something simple. I’ll give you an example from years ago. I was invited in as a mediator between a separatist group in Indonesia that had been fighting for 25 years for their independence from Indonesia, thousands of people dead. I was meeting the head of the guerilla group and the leaders and so on in Geneva. We were about to meet with the foreign minister of Indonesia the next day, but I began by asking them, “I understand your position; it’s independence, but if I may, why do you want independence? What’s your interest?”
There was this long silence, like they struggled with it. “What do you mean, independence? It’s self-evident. We want independence.” I said, “But why do you want independence?” They struggled with it for a long time. I finally said, “Okay, is it you want your own place in the U.N.? Is it because you want political autonomy, the ability to have your own parliament and run things? Is it economic? Do you want control over your natural resources? Is it cultural? Do you want your kids to go to school in your own language?”
We started to unpack it, and the reason why it was so important, because they’d never — it just struck me. Here, they’ve been fighting for 25 years, thousands of people dead, and they knew what their position was, but they hadn’t really thought through what their strategic interests were and prioritized them. The reason why that was so important was because of BATNA. Their best alternative to negotiated agreement was to continue the war.
I said to them, “Are you going to win this war?” They said, “Oh, the Indonesian army is much stronger; 10 years, we’ll still be fighting this war.” I said, “Is there any way that you can pursue your interests without even giving up your aspiration for independence? Is there any way you can meet your interest in autonomy and control over natural resources and so on?”
That began a whole conversation with them. They went back into their movement for a couple years, and lo and behold, a few years later after that tsunami, they came back and they negotiated an agreement with the Indonesian government, which gave them autonomy, control of their natural resources, kids can go to school in their own language or they can practice their own religion, everything. There was an election, and the governor and the vice governor came from this independence movement. They advanced their interests without surrendering their ultimate aspiration, but they moved it forward. That, to me, just showed just the enormous value of always digging behind positions, because we’re like that. We’ve got our position. It becomes self-evident, but oftentimes we know our position, but we don’t know what our interests are, and so we miss the chance to advance our interests. (Ferriss, 2024, para. 212-216)
In subsequent posts, I plan to explore each quadrant’s positions and interests for a variety of political topics. However, this planned writing should be prefaced by acknowledging a major challenge of policy negotiation. Our trouble isn’t only that we don’t identify interests. It’s partly that the two-party system sets up a winner-takes-all dynamic, which has been much discussed as a hindrance to compromise. We are often left having to work with our BATNA, Ury’s acronym for “best alternative to negotiated agreement.”
Our Current Trajectory: Civil War?
This may seem overblown, but I’ve heard lately from several podcasters I respect that the U.S. seems—according to immigrants who have experienced civil war in their own nation of origin—to remind them of the unrest that preceded a revolution or a decline of law and order. It is only with this unacceptable alternative in mind that most would even consider increasing state rights and decreasing federal power. Either that, or elect a compromise candidate RFK Jr., who is drawing equal support from red and blue anti-establishment, instead of one of the duopoly candidates, Biden or Trump. Interestingly, we’re seeing a relatively even three-way division in the polls among these top three candidates, with RFK Jr. representing an anti-establishment coalition. This seems too much a risk to duopoly supporters, but by digging in to the standard positions and ignoring the anti-establishment complaints, the establishment risks the stability it insists is a primary value and interest.
The BATNA: Localism?
Mediator Diane M. Hamilton states the following in her book Everything is Workable, for which William Ury wrote an endorsement:
We don't have to change anyone's worldview; we have to work with it....In some real sense, we have to accept that we can't all just get along—at least not yet. (Hamilton, 2013, p. 171)
It is a challenge to find a win-win solution or compromise, due to our winner-takes-all duopoly election system. We may not be up to it. The BATNA I see for any of the topics of strong disagreement between the quadrants, is the same. If we can’t compromise, can we localize?
It may be that localism, including increased states’ rights, is the only realistic way to meet all the quadrants’ interests. This means each party has to tolerate that other quadrants will not share their values. One might counter that “divided we fall.” I contend that increased states rights would be less of a division than we would have if the federal government continues to impose one-size-fits-all solutions. By letting different cultural mindsets have their way in their own place, they may stop feeling the culture war is the most critical issue. They may then be willing to unite in some projects that are a common national interest.
If you really believe in self-determination for yourself, you have to allow that those raised in what you may consider an oppressive culture may choose to stay within it. Yet they may, like Tara Westover, find a way out of it. The alternative—let me address my progressive comrades—is that in trying to impose your values, you instantiate the worst fears of tyranny that all of Q-anon is convinced you represent. Your lifestyle appears just as depraved as theirs does to you. To progressives, the self-serving coercion that white males with fundamentalist religious ideologies perpetrate on young women, keeping them “barefoot and pregnant,” is horrifying. To some fundamentalist Christians, the promotion of teenagers being indoctrinated that it is status-enhancing to announce a gender not matching the sex one is born as, and proceeding to hormonally sterilize and surgically “mutilate” ones body is equally horrifying. What may end up being a workable way forward is to allow red states and blue states to differently define what is acceptable within their borders, and maintain the allowance of people to move. Of course there is a social and economic cost to moving, but there is likely a worse cost of either “side” trying to force a whole nation to adhere to a winner-takes-all acceptance of national laws repugnant to them.
Green-quadrant advocate and academic Tyson Yunkaporta muses on the overlap of the anti-establishment:
“What's the Libertarians…crossover with New Age stuff now?….New age culture [green] has collided with conspiracy culture [yellow quadrant]….in this quite startling way. It's no longer a horseshoe. It's just a, it's the cycle is complete” (Young, 2024, para. 78, 80, 82).
He also states the disturbing necessity of letting the other live according to their own values, if we want to avoid “global fascism”:
This globalizing culture…democratic culture. It's kind of eating itself in that way….It's all falling apart. I'm kinda excited to see what emerges next.…after this one finishes eating itself, which it's pretty close to doing. I think we got like one more U.S. election cycle left in it. After that, nothing's going to mean anything. There's going to be no truth, no story, no unifying narrative to sort of hold all the atoms together, and then everything else sort of dissolves into a quantum soup, and then reform around something else. Who knows what that'll be...global fascism, where uh, I don't know...like startling diversity and a whole heap of productive, interdependent regionalism, who knows?….That's where the yearning is pointing people towards, you know? Unfortunately, for some people, that means a compound with 14-year-old wives and lots of rifles. (Young, 2024, para. 76, 78)
As a green myself, like Yunkaporta, I prefer “startling diversity and a whole heap of productive, interdependent regionalism” over tyranny of the majority. Those who would end up subjected to that tyranny, which they fear would be imposed mainly by the left, are understandably adamant about their gun rights. Pew’s populist right doesn’t want dead children, but they see all the school shooting coverage as a ruse to confiscate their weapons and subject them to wage slavery. Wait, wage slavery has already happened. They don’t want their children indoctrinated into leftist ideology, hence the preference for homeschool. They’re not going to settle into a comfortable acquiescence if you offer them UBI. A couple of my liberal friends asked me prior to Trump’s election, “why is this segment of the working class going to vote against their interests?” Because it’s not just economic. It’s also cultural. If pressed, they’re going to storm the capitol again even if they know they can’t win. They’d rather die trying to preserve their liberty. Understand their heroes. Nathan Hale: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." Patrick Henry: "Give me liberty or give me death." Then you’ll see that trying to placate them or silence them with name-calling (e.g., racist, deplorables) is not effective, especially for the racial minorities that have increasingly joined them.
The following quadrants show the different states’ alignment with four parties. It’s not all that simple, because you have major metropolitan areas often differing from the rural areas of of a state. For example, there’s a huge difference between woke Portland and the anarchist-leaning eastern half of Oregon that given a chance would go full-on Libertarian. You’re going to have some “battleground” states remain purple, where residents can figure it out amongst themselves better than Washington DC can.
Party Stronghold States
Note. Underlined are over 80% urban, which shows left more citified & right more rural.
Wikipedia’s “Swing State” page was the source for the red versus blue states in the 2020 election. See also “Red States and Blue States.” Those states listed in the green or yellow quadrants are omitted from the red or blue quadrants above, unless they had strong representation in both the anti-establishment and establishment. This placement choice is based on the hypothesis that those states’ national election votes would have sided with the establishment quadrant closest to them as the “lesser of evils,” but with much reservation that relates to an anti-establishment sentiment.
The quadrants on the right have more states with a large rural population that have strong Libertarian and Republican votes. According to the World Population Review (2022), those not underlined have more rural population than the U.S. average 20% rural population. The converse is also true, in that there are more states with a larger percent (80% or more) of their population living urban that voted Democrat or have Green office holders. Greens often vote Democrat for national elections, with the well-founded belief that no Green presidential candidate has a chance of winning in the current electoral system, so instead of comparing the Green vote for presidential elections, it is more telling to look at non-presidential electoral votes. The moderate swing-state New Hampshire can’t be counted on to stay in this quadrant.
Thanks for reading. Here’s a related post.
References
Hamilton, D. M. (2013). Everything is workable. Shambala.
World Population Review. (2022). Most libertarian states. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/most-libertarian-states
Young, A. (2024). Transcript: Tyson Yunkaporta on inviolable lore, ep. 362 [Audio podcast]. https://forthewild.world/podcast-transcripts/tyson-yunkaporta-on-inviolable-lore-362
Repeat of Quadrants Content
This section repeats the writing in the quadrants, for any who have difficulty reading in that format. Groups are presented in order of political party size.
States with strongest Democrat (Biden) vote in 2020
California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, New Hampshire
States with strongest Republican (Trump) vote in 2020
Utah, Oklahoma, Wyoming, North Dakota, Alabama, Kentucky, South Dakota, Arkansas, West Virginia
States with Green political office holders in 2020
Oregon, California, Massachusetts, Illinois, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Maine
Wikipedia reports the most Green officeholders in these states. There are no seats held by Greens in the national congress.
States with strong Libertarian vote in 2020
Nevada, Texas, Washington, Arizona, Oregon, Montana, New Hampshire, Alaska, New Mexico, and Idaho (World Population Review, 2022, para. 17), plus Michigan had a Libertarian party member in a U.S. house of representatives seat (para. 3)