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Bridge Grades & the Fight Against Toxic Polarization
This week, Wilk is joined by Brad Porteus, founder of BridgeGrades.org, to discuss the pervasive issue of toxic political polarization and identity politics in America.
Brad shares his experience of returning to the U.S. after 14 years abroad, seeing a "stark" difference and feeling "mad" about the decay of the civic fabric. The conversation delves into the dangers of the outrage economy that profits from division, and how our perception of reality is being warped by algorithms.
Brad introduces BridgeGrades.org, a new data-driven system that evaluates every member of Congress on one key dimension:
Are they Bridgers—or Dividers?
This conversation digs into pluralism, loss of agency, legislative dysfunction, and how we can build a healthier civic culture by supporting leaders who collaborate instead of perform.
Topics Include:
Learn more in the full show notes for this episode at DerateTheHate.com.
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Transcript is AI generated and may contain errors
[00:00:00:00] Wilk Wilkinson: Imagine leaving America for 14 years. Coming back and seeing the divide hit you like a punch. That's what happened to Brad Porteus. And he was mad. So he built bridge grades.org a new way to spot which politicians actually collaborate instead of perform. If you're tired of feeling powerless and a boiling culture, stick around. This is how we take our agency back. Welcome back, my friends, for the Derate the Hate podcast. I'm your host, Wilk Wilkinson, your blue collar sage calming outrage and helping to navigate a world divided by fog and those who would spread that fear, outrage and grievance. The D Rate the Hate podcast is proudly produced in collaboration with Braver Angels, America's largest grassroots cross. partisan organization working towards civic renewal. This podcast amplifies the mission that we share to foster a more respectful and united America where civic friendship thrives even when we disagree. Each week, through the power of story, conversation, and connection with incredible guests, we work to build bridges instead of barriers, not to change minds on the issues, but to change how we see one another when we differ. Because friends, it really is about bettering the world one attitude at a time. We did not create the hate, but together we can Derate the Hate. So be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Share it with a friend and visit BraverAngels.org to learn how you can get involved in the movement to bridge the partisan divide. Friends, I am so incredibly grateful that you have joined me for another powerful Derate the Hate episode. So let's get to it. My guest today is a man who saw the division with the stark, fresh eyes of a returning expatriate, Brad Porteus spent 14 years living and working abroad in Singapore and Amsterdam, leading big consumer technology companies. When he returned to the U.S. in 2024, he wasn't just disturbed, he was alarmed, even mad by the toxic political polarization and the headwind it's creating for our country. He noticed something that we who live here every day, have become numb to how easily we've self sorted into the red team and the blue team, letting our political identity become our core identity. We are all caught in the outrage economy, where people from big tech to media to politicians are profiting by convincing us that we are more divided than we actually are. That feeling of powerlessness, that feeling of hopelessness. Brad says that is precisely the trap that we must stop falling into. His answer is bridge grades.org. It's a data driven system to look past the rhetoric and grade our legislators on what they do. Their collaboration and bridging over division. This isn't about giving up your values. It's about embracing pluralism and finding the win wins. This conversation is the onramp that we need to restore our agency and heal the civic fabric of our nation. Let's get into it with my friend Brad Porteus. Here we go. Brad Porteus. Welcome to the Derate the Hate podcast, my friend. So good to see you again.
[00:04:12:18] Brad Porteus: Hey, thanks for the invitation.
[00:04:14:12] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah, absolutely. So for the listeners, I want to just throw it out there right away. I got to meet Brad at a, a bridging coalition summit, a little while back out in Mount Vernon, We were there for a bridging coalition summit. And Brad came up to me and talked to talk to me a little bit about the bridge grades, project that he's he's working on and bridge grades.org. And I, got to hear a little bit about his story, and, and I wanted to bring it to the listeners because not only do I mean, obviously being in the bridging space, any time I hear something about, you know, bridge building or people trying to better the world in one way or another, I get pretty excited. I like to bring those stories to the listeners. So, Brad, let's start with, I want to know more about your story because, looking at your past, looking at how what led you to the bridging space, you know, you spent several years overseas working for, or working for a variety of companies, I guess, and doing different things. And then you come back to the States, in 2024. So let's start there, because you said something that that really stood out to me, and and that's you said you said that you were disturbed, that you were troubled by a number of the different things, you know, polarization wise, when you got back to the states.
[00:05:41:20] Brad Porteus: So I might have you and said I was I might have even said I was mad. Maybe you did. I do remember I do remember the moment I met you because, you know, you're you're a pretty distinctive guy and that you're on my list of people to me. But then you and I were walking around and Mount Vernon, and I was talking to somebody else, and I think I made the comment that I was hoping I'd be good in this life and get reincarnated as a Labrador retriever. And then you chuckled. And, I think it's that's how it all started. Yeah. Yeah. No, look, I'm I'm a guy who fell into this work. Like, I think a lot of other people are, and sort of found me in some ways, to your point, I had basically returned to the US after living abroad for 14 years. So I moved, to Asia. I lived in Singapore for seven years, and then work took me to Amsterdam, and I was there another seven years, and then I returned back to the US. And I had kids with me and family. My wife and I did this, and, it was a situation where I was returning back in 2024 after being abroad this whole time. And I was gosh, I was like nervous. I was like scared what I was going to find, you know, I'd been back to visit, you know, of course, but yeah, it's just different when, when I was coming to come back and immerse myself back into my neighborhood and everything else, and, to be honest, I was really worried about it, and it was causing me, to, to think about. Well, you know, maybe this is something that, maybe I should lean into and try to learn more about. And one thing led to another, and I can tell you all about that, but but that's how it all started.
[00:07:08:19] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah. So and I definitely want to get into that because, you know, when people live overseas, well, a lot of times people that, that I've found here in the States that are constantly in, you know, in it like, like many things, right. When that's what our reality is. That's what our lives experience is. We don't quite notice it so much. But you, when you leave in 2010, come back in 2024, you know, you're gone for 14 years. There's definitely a shift in the in the Overton window, I guess in so many ways here in the United States. And, and polarization has, has certainly become one of those things that has shifted toxic polarity, whether it be societal divides, political divides, just just the civic fabric of our nation in many ways feels torn. And I think a lot of people, Brad, that that are constantly here may not see it because it happens. It's not like it happens overnight. It happens incrementally. Yeah.
[00:08:17:23] Brad Porteus: Yeah, that's a great point, Wilk. It's I guess what comes up for me is the boiling frog analogy. You know, where the you put a frog in a, in a pot of water and you gradually heat it up, and supposedly it won't jump out because it doesn't realize that it's getting too hot for itself. And I think in some ways, when you're in it like you're describing in terms of living here in the US and your day to day, you incrementally don't notice the difference. But when you step away and come back, then the difference is, is very stark. And to your point, it's not just the polarization. There's lots of other things as well, but it's amazing how many of the topics come back to this. The topic of polarization. And what's striking, I think, is, is the, the identity politics and the way that people, so naturally have self sorted into the red team and the blue team and, it's, it was just sort of amazing to see that I'm, you know, I grew up, I'm a Gen Xer, I grew up in the 70s and so forth, and so I'm old enough to remember that there was a time when there was an ideological overlap between the parties. And that was then, an environment where, first of all, people didn't identify so clearly as one or the other. I mean, my dad was a Republican. My mother, my mom's a Democrat, and their families came from these different parties. But it didn't it never really was an issue at all. And that was normal. And nowadays it's it's like, that's pretty unusual. So, I'm used to and aware of, of the fact that it can be different. So, for people who are younger, it's like, oh, well, this must be like the way it always is and always will be. But that hasn't always been the case. No, and I think, I think there's a lot of reasons why it's the case. And there's been a ton of diagnosis. I'm sure your you and your listeners have been talking about these topics for a long time in terms of those diagnoses. But, you know, I got to the point where I was like, well, maybe we can do something about it. And, and actually, one of the things we can talk more about the, the discrepancy of what I left and what I, what I came back to. But I think one of the things that I was really struck by was how distraught, everybody felt about the fact that, oh, there's nothing we can do about it. So we're polarized, but gosh, there's nothing we can do about it. And this sort of feeling of, hopelessness. And I thought to myself, hey, wait a minute, we're Americans. I feel like we there's always a way, like we can always try something new. Like, where is that spirit? Like, I felt like it was just sort of missing. Yeah. I mean, it's there. Wilk, because, you know, you guys are doing it braver angels and there's is, it's it's there, but it's not visible. Right.
[00:10:46:15] Wilk Wilkinson: And that's that loss of agency that we really are working especially a Braver Angels, that loss of agency that, that so many people feel today that we're working so hard to, to, to help renew for people, you know, through courageous citizenship to courageous dialog. That that is one of the most important things because you have a powerlessness and you have a hopelessness. Right. And when people feel powerless, they get angry.
[00:11:18:00] Brad Porteus: Or, you know, that's a great.
[00:11:19:00] Wilk Wilkinson: Point, will feel hopeless. They get depressed. Well, there's a whole bunch of things that come along with, with both hopelessness and feeling depressed and that lack of agency that powerlessness. Because then people get angry and you combine that with the ugliness of polarization and you talked, you said something really great there, Brad, about self segregating and how back in the 70s and I, I grew up in the 70s, in the 80s as well. And there wasn't this thing, I mean, maybe for some people, but it was probably much more anecdotal than it is today, where people's political identity was not part of their core identity. Like. That's right. Right. The identity politics and the, well segregating and the siloing. Well, when we start to self segregate and silo, we, we end up in this situation where we, we lose sight of who people really are. And when we lose sight of who they are. Like Monica Guzman says, those who are underrepresented in our life will be overrepresented in our minds and imaginations. And then I continue on that statement to say that those things that we are imagining are not the best of those that we're segregating.
[00:12:34:11] Brad Porteus: That's right.
[00:12:35:07] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah.
[00:12:36:02] Brad Porteus: And the data is that data that the data backs that up.
[00:12:39:19] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah.
[00:12:41:02] Brad Porteus: All the research and everything else. Right. We ascribe better intentions to people who we identify with, and we ascribe worse intentions to the people we don't identify with. And and then you do the actual research in the data itself and it's like doesn't, doesn't connect at all. So it does.
[00:12:57:13] Wilk Wilkinson: Not it does not connect. It's just such an ugly thing. Because then that separation makes us hate those that are, that those are, that those we have siloed ourselves from, once we start to hate them, we imagine them as being worse. The affective polarization takes over. And then that powerlessness and hopelessness that we feel makes people do all sorts of ugly things. So we take this, you know, to the next level of political violence. Political violence is definitely there's definitely a causal link between that powerlessness, that lack of agency, that hopelessness, that depression that comes along with that, and then the hate that they have for people that they don't understand. That's why it's so important that we find, we find a way to bridge those divides. We find a way to have those courageous, conversations across divides.
[00:13:52:22] Brad Porteus: And I think what you bring up a bunch of things that I attempted to react to. But. But I think one of them is, is that, you know, the the Fog, economy makes it so that the outrage economy is such that people are profiting from this. So it's easy for us to think that we are so far divided that it's beyond hope. But actually the reality is, is that there's the the bell curve is a lot stronger than people actually think it is, but the deck is stacked against us as citizens because, big tech and, algorithms and politicians are all getting rich and influencers are all getting rich by convincing us and media, I mean, all of them. Everybody is making money, dividing us. And so I think once people begin to realize that we're sort of pawns in a bigger game, and it's a bit of a trap and they want us to believe that we're more divided than we are, then we're falling into that trap. And I a lot of times I like to say, like, we have to figure out a way to stop taking the bait. I mean, we're being baited, baited into this, this rage and that that cycle that you just described. Because people are getting profiting. They're making money off of it. And yeah, some of it is authentic, but humans are not that different than they were when you and I were growing up. I mean, it's not that we're fundamentally different species. Are we different people? It's just that we've been tricked into behaving in a way that is, unhealthy.
[00:15:19:02] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah. And and we. Well, I said it earlier that Overton window. Right? What we get used to now becomes the norm. You know, perception becomes reality. One of the things that I've been talking a lot about lately, Brad, is the idea of it, that perception for for, I mean, us as human beings, perception is reality. Quite often. And our perception of things is strongly guided by what we consume. It's it's strongly guided by the media that we watch, the media that we listen to, the, the the people that we follow on social media, the politicians that we, we begin to prop up as, as that's right, idealistic figures, things like that. So if what we're consuming is the strongest guider for our perception, our perception becomes reality. Our reality is very skewed. And that window has shifted greatly in the past 10 or 15 years.
[00:16:22:00] Brad Porteus: And not as a and not and not together. I mean, we've been there's the windows have been collectively shifted away from each other. So there's the two windows that have been.
[00:16:31:10] Wilk Wilkinson: Moved into reality.
[00:16:33:03] Brad Porteus: Yeah. No, I mean, look, I think, but this is your 286, 290, 200, 300, nearing 300 podcast. That you. Amen. Yeah. There's going to be I got to believe that that that by now, like, there's there's been like a ton of unpacking. About what? You know, how we got here and why we're here, and and, and so forth. But but I guess the, the, one of the interesting things is that maybe we can talk about is, is like, well, how do we get out of it? Like, what are the things that we can do to get out? And there's a bunch of stuff, I think that, that matter. And, you know, some of it are these gigantic, big structural things that are hard to do. Which is why when I just said that people were I had given up and we're hopeless and we're not we're not trying anymore. A lot of those things are like, you know, I don't know, maybe the way the elections are run and all these giant structural things, but there are other things that we, I think, as a society can do. I do think, I do think regulating, social media at a certain level for and somehow some sort of controls over the algorithm, and the algorithms that, that are now basically running all of our lives, is, is merited and I'm not an expert on that, but I think that that's important because when you talked about how perception is reality, our perception is only the algorithm that we're being fed. So, that, that is that is a dangerous, spot. But I think transparency and, and, accountability, is sort of what's on my mind, especially around what, you know, what bridge creates is really all about. So the way I like to think about what bridge creates is for it's really about trying to strengthen legislative health. The latest the the health of the legislative branch. Right. So if you recognize there's three branches of government, I would characterize the moment we're in as the executive branch, is claiming as much power as possible and is testing its limits on what is in its power. I think the judicial branch has been, effectively supportive of that in terms of offering a green light and, allowing, if not encouraging additional executive power. And this is where our founding fathers would have said, well, hey, if they go too far, then the legislative branch needs to step in and act as a counterbalance and make things right and, and put those speed bumps in and guardrails in place. But the fact is, is that our legislative branch is actually very ineffective as a counterbalance right now, to the other two branches of government. And why is that? Well, the polarization of the of these two chambers is so extreme that they're unable to really find each other and, and govern for the bulk of the people. And why are they why are they so polarized? What's the incentives? You know, money and power ultimately is going to the people who are the most extreme so that the, the, our, our legislative representatives are like a U-shaped curve and the population is more like a bell shaped curve. It might be a double camel hump curve, but more people are in the middle than the representation of our legislative branch. And that's because of incentives. So the goal is, is to actually try to shift the incentives over a period of time. And the way we're trying to do that is by, first of all, trying, measuring, using public data to that not on if theological base is not on the left or right basis, but we're measuring our legislators on how collaborative or divisive they are. So if you think of it like a polarization score, you earn points for collaborating with people in the other party. So legislative record and bipartisanship comes into play in a very big way. Okay. And also if your, your rhetoric, there's rhetoric, analysis, all of this is done by third parties. We can get into the details of it, but, loosely, it's about what you do and what you say. So the legislative record is about bipartisanship. The rhetoric analysis is about two things. Do you talk about bipartisanship, and also do you engage in personal attacks? not challenging policy, but actually personally attacking other people. So we pull all these data, this data together. We create a 100 point scale. The top half of the class get A's and B's and we call them Bridgers. The bottom half of the class get C's and F, so we call them dividers. And the scoring is, updated about every couple, 2 or 3 months. And we'll continue to update through the course of their term as, congresspeople and the 119th Congress.
[00:20:48:07] Wilk Wilkinson: Okay. So let's talk a little bit more about the the rhetoric meter then. Because. Yeah, because because quite often the rhetoric that we see, you know, rhetoric has a lot to do with political theater, you know, theater, the rhetoric is, is, is often. I guess what I'm trying to go with this is so, so rhetoric is one thing and, and politicians that there, there are obviously politicians, Brad who spend a lot more time in front of a camera and a lot more time in front of a microphone than others. So is there a weighted scale for those who who really just want to do their job? They kind of stay away from the cameras, they stay away from the microphones. And then there's the more hyperbolic ones. That and obviously the media outlets are searching out, right? There's oh.
[00:21:40:11] Brad Porteus: Yeah.
[00:21:41:06] Wilk Wilkinson: Those that that really have an affinity for whipping up people's emotions through their rhetoric. Yeah. So so how does that weighted scale play into it. Because yeah, I think that's got to be a part an important part of how this works.
[00:21:55:19] Brad Porteus: Super, super good question. I think so we do to your point, we do apply different weights to different data sets based on how, correlated they are or how much signal they give us within the noise. We talk a lot about with data. You talk a lot, a lot, a lot about finding the signal within the noise. And the signal we're calibrating towards is this idea of, of collaboration versus divisiveness. So if you look at rhetoric, and let me back up one second broadly, we sort of have the point of view, which is like two thirds of your score should be what you do, and one third should be what you say. It's about that it's approximately, and that's because walking the walk is more important than talking the talk.
[00:22:33:20] Wilk Wilkinson: So but it's so two thirds is what you do and one third is what you say.
[00:22:39:18] Brad Porteus: That's right. Roughly speaking. And that's subject to change. And we're going to continue to sharpen and analyze things. And nothing is set in stone. But but generally speaking, it's more important what you do than what you say. But but what do you say matters, right? I mean, rhetoric absolutely matters. In our system. So, so we we on the rhetoric analysis perspective, we're using data that's coming from an organization called the Polarization Research Lab. It's a Dartmouth lab. There's some Penn people involved. There might it might be some Stanford people involved, but it's like a usual sort of academic, think tank, if you will. And one of the things that they do is they, use technology to scrape all of the statements coming from every, congressperson. So they look at Twitter, they look at, speeches, they look at, press releases, everything they can get their hands on. And then what they do is they chunk it up into bite size sound bites. So sentences, if you will, that they run every single sentence through, set of prompts. By the way, we, we don't like to use a lot of AI and black box, but if someone else is doing it, then. Okay. But we just want to explain how it works. So in this case they, they run it through a bunch of prompts. And one of them is how often, you know, is this comment about bipartisanship. So they're logging the number of times somebody is talking about bipartisanship. And so you earn points in our system for that. And then there's a second prompted ask, is this a personal attack? And they have, a way of determining whether somebody is being essentially going on the attack and attacking someone's person, a character, as opposed to, you know, say, challenging, you know, a policy, for example, or a belief, and you lose points for, for being, for engaging in personal attacks. And then the rating system weighs these kind of inputs, and, but it's a relative basis. Right. So in Senate you have 100 senators in the House, you have 435 representatives that your personal attacks are compared to the rest of your peer group. So do you engage more or less than your peers in personal attacks, for example? So you can imagine you have all of these different columns of data where you're you're racked and stacked against your peers on these different dimensions. And then we sort of sum it all up. And what ends up happening is there's a pretty good distribution or differentiation between the people who are the bridges and who are the dividers. And I think one of the most interesting things is the dividers, like, I mean, I'm not intrinsically like a political guy, Wilk, you probably think. I mean, I'm learning because this I'm now doing this work, but I didn't like I don't know who's who. Like, I don't follow it that closely, but I knew the names of the dividers. Like, if you look at the list of people who get F's on our system, I mean, these people are all famous.
[00:25:19:00] Wilk Wilkinson: Right. Yeah, they're the ones who, like I said, they're the ones they're they're constantly in front of a camera. They're constantly told a microphone. And the reason they're constantly in front of a camera and a microphone is because they are the those that capitalize on fog. I mean, absolutely, and yes, you're right, you're right. Brad. Most people don't know the names of all those, all of those people. I mean, I'm one that that often says the phrase those who represent us are far too often not the best of us, because, again, that perception is reality thing. Right? If the people that we constantly see and this is why Congress has such a low approval rating, but, if constantly what we see are those representatives or senators and, and congressmen and women that are just the deep polarizers.
[00:26:08:16] Brad Porteus: Yeah. That's right, that's right.
[00:26:09:19] Wilk Wilkinson: The first question that we have as been all of them.
[00:26:13:04] Brad Porteus: Well that that a few things. One is you're right, they're not all of them are that way. However the incentives are there are there for them to be that way. And so therefore it's self-selecting. So the people who love that kind of, you know, polarizing leadership, if you want to call it that, are attracted to running for Congress. If you're a more thoughtful, nuanced person who can hold two different competing thoughts in your mind and understand that, they may not be ideologically in tune with each other. If you're a more nuanced person like that, you have no interest in being in Congress because you're just going to get destroyed, you know? So it's a it's a self-selecting system. So when you talked about the phrase, the quote, you just said about our best not being there, it's true, because the best people who I think would be best in representing the broadest, what I call like our deliciously eclectic society, it means you have to hold all of these different thoughts simultaneously. And yeah, I mean, the people who can do that don't want to go into the ring because they're going to get punched in the face and that's like, it's not satisfying enough.
[00:27:16:09] Wilk Wilkinson: Whereas and quite often they're getting attacked from both sides. Because because they're not they're not extreme enough for one side and certainly not extreme enough for the other. I do have a question, Brad, because this yes, this brings up a point that we at Braver Angels are often, people perceive us as just wanting everybody to be in some squishy middle. Right? Some oh.
[00:27:40:21] Brad Porteus: I'm glad you.
[00:27:41:22] Wilk Wilkinson: Just completely compromise their principles and come to the center, which is definitely not what Braver Angels is about. It's certainly not what I'm about. I mean, I'm I've been in the in the depolarization business as a volunteer for several years, and now this is my full time job. But I'm a very conservative guy. I have I have conservative principles. I live by those principles. But I also understand the value in being able to talk across partisan lines.
[00:28:10:10] Brad Porteus: Right? Oh man, I'm so glad you brought this up. I think this is a really misunderstood part of the work that you're doing that I'm doing. And other people who are interested in this sort of topic are doing, the the way I like to think about it is, I mean, I love this word pluralism, which I mean, it's kind of a wonky word. It but the gist of it is like comes from E pluribus unum, and that is like one is from many. One. And the idea of pluralism is to say it's you shouldn't you can be a bridge or Wilk, and you can embrace your conservative values and live your life through that lens and still be a bridge. Right? Because bridging is about bridging is about win win and dividing is about zero sum game. So, you and I don't have to agree on things to to come together. We just have to find a common area of overlap. And so one of the things that that I think a lot about it in our system tries to measure is, is this idea of collaboration. And it relates to your question because the topic that I often get challenged on is you. But that doesn't that mean you're just rewarding people for compromising and I said, actually, no. So this is a really important distinction to make, which is to say that to collaborate with somebody is not to compromise with them. A compromising is kind of a dirty word, because it means you're giving up something of you. That's right. Maybe they get it trade off or they get something from somebody else. So so okay, that can happen. But what I'm talking about is imagine you and I have a Venn diagram of overlap. And maybe there's a bunch of things that I'm not Christian, I'm not conservative. But that doesn't mean that we don't have a ton of things in common. And so the point of if you and I were to collaborate on something, we find, well, what is it that we're in? Where do our then where does our Venn diagram overlap? And I promise you, every single, if you give me two human beings on this planet from any walk of life, their Venn diagram will overlap on something. So, and more things than they think. So the idea is, if our country is amazing when we have this diverse set of people with different beliefs and ideas, one thing that we tend to cycle back to the beginning of this conversation, one of the things that I was so struck by coming back to the US was suddenly in our country. We're trying to convince everybody else that we're right, you know, that, that there's one way or there's one answer or there's one concept, and everyone needs to believe the same thing. Like this whole idea of quote unquote United States. I'm wearing my shirt that says States that say the design of the, the the coach of the U.S. men's soccer team who wore the shirt. I thought it was like super, super funny because it's like he's. Yeah, we're states. We're not exactly united, but we are states. Yeah, but the point is, is like our founding fathers, like they said, 13 colonies, like, you know, those colonies, you could live totally differently in these different colonies. And that was fine. And, you know, no one tried to convince each other. I mean, there probably was some, some haranguing, but the point was, it's like we're all free to be how we wanted to live. And America is amazing. When you bring together all of these different perspectives and you come up with the best idea and you come up with a win win, it's we're failing right now because we're not finding each other and finding those win wins. We're so busy pulling on the tug of war rope.
[00:31:32:04] Wilk Wilkinson: Talking past each other instead of trying to. And that's that's so hugely important. It's it's so hugely important because, you know, Stephen Covey talked about it in the seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Compromise is typically going to be either lose lose or lose, win or win lose. Synergy is when we come together and work together for for something that's better than the sum of its parts. Love and and the reality is, and I've had this conversation with so many people, Brad, that when it comes to to talking to Christ or having courageous conversations across political divides, it's not about always finding common ground. Sometimes we will. And that's fantastic. Like you said, everybody's going to have commonalities in their Venn diagram, and that's important. If nothing else, if we find no other common ground on a particular topic other than the fact, Brad, that that I'm a human being, you're a human being. We have our shared humanity, and we can walk away with no common ground on a particular topic, but we walk away not hating each other. At least we've got a path, or at least we've got a stepping stone to a path towards the next thing that we're going to work on together. That's it. I mean, that's it.
[00:32:48:03] Brad Porteus: Yeah. That's it, that's it. And it's not that hard to find that commonality when you're in the room face to face with people. So I do think that the more people can be around each other and with each other, the better. One of the one of the gifts of of being an American overseas is any time you ran into another American, you instantly found like total rapport. I mean, it could be about like Halloween. It could be about whatever's happening, right? Yeah, yeah. There's so much there's so much commonality, so instantly. And there were definitely times when we got we made friends very quickly, you know, overseas. And then maybe you find out later that you have different value sets or different ideas or different backgrounds or maybe different politics. And it didn't matter. It didn't matter. We're both in we're both in this together. Like, you know, I hope you guys are coming over next Saturday. We're barbecuing like, great. We're bringing the potato salad. Awesome.
[00:33:38:05] Wilk Wilkinson: And that's the world that we remember from when we were growing up. Brad is, I think, you know, having beers in the driveway with the neighbor. We weren't talking about politics. Everything wasn't a political discussion. You know, I know people got together in their cul de sacs and did did community barbecues and things like that. And and politics wasn't the main topic of conversation. Political identity was not the main part of everybody's core identity. We got together because we're human beings and we love our fellow human beings of many. One, we live in a pluralistic society. Brad, take us home as our conversation. We've we've run out of time.
[00:34:15:07] Brad Porteus: I love that, I love that I'll take it home just by saying, like, you know, if I can build on what you just said, which is this, this, unnecessary, like sports, like team red versus blue, Republican versus Democrat, you know, whatever it is, if we can drop that and instead unify around, let's, like, support Bridgers and let's throw out dividers. Doesn't matter what my party is. Doesn't matter what their party is like. If we can systematically think about the world through a vertical lens in addition to our horizontal lens, then I think we'll be better off and we'll find each other. And that win win mentality will come back, and we'll be out of the slow lane and back into the fast lane, and that's that's, that's what I'm here for.
[00:34:59:02] Wilk Wilkinson: Beautifully sad man. So, so the website obviously BridgeGrades.org. Right. Bridge grades.org.
[00:35:06:09] Brad Porteus: the grades are live. So if everybody who's listening is curious, just if you hit the website and do a search at the top, or you can find the tables and stuff, but just search for yours or search for your the name of your state and you'll pop up and hopefully you'll you'll be surprised. I mean, I think I'm always surprised when I see some of the results. And it makes me think differently about them. So I encourage you to do that as well.
[00:35:25:18] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah. So bridgegrades.org. The, I love what you said. Support the bridgers, let's throw out the dividers. Let's find a way as Americans again to get back to the win win to the synergy. It's not about compromising your principles. It's about. It's about winning. It's about winning for the country. Brad Porteus thank you so much. Bridge grades.org. And it's it's been a fantastic conversation. I look forward to many more.
[00:35:53:05] Brad Porteus: I loved it and thanks for the invitation.
[00:35:56:15] Wilk Wilkinson: Friends, I want to thank you so much for tuning in. And if there's anything in this episode that provided exceptional value to you, please make sure to hit that share button. If you haven't done so already, please be sure to subscribe to get the Derate the Hate podcast sent to your email inbox every week. We really are better together, so please take a moment to visit BraverAngels.org and consider joining the movement towards civic renewal and bridging our political divides. This is Wilk wrapping up for the week saying get out there. Be kind to one another. Be grateful for everything you've got. And remember, it's up to you to make every day the day that you want it to be. With that, my friends, I'm going to back on out of here and we will catch you next week. Take care.
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