"Them" serves as an approachable primer on the building blocks of civil discourse. I appreciated this kind of work from a Republican politician as I am always searching for resources like this from both sides of the aisle to use with folks with opposing view points. I appreciated the connections he made to our communal fracturing as a society who has lost track of one another. I don't know that the "solutions" or "ideas" for reconnection are as robust as I had hoped. But I would still argue this serves a purpose that is much needed in today's time, especially as we look to a new election year.

Surely the recent election season pointed to the need for more civil discourse in this country and Ben Sasse, Republican Senator for Nebraska, has just written a book titled THEM: Why We Hate Each Other and How to Heal. The various chapters focus on our loneliness and the resulting anger that is displayed as a result of fear and a feeling of not belonging. Instead of pursuing elusive personal happiness, Sasse offers more traditional advice: love your neighbor and connect with your community. Expanding upon work by social scientists like Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone), Sasse says, "Our isolation has deprived us of healthy local tribes with whom we share values and goals and ways of life that uplift us and so we fall into 'anti-tribes,' defined by what we're against rather than what we're for." Certainly, several Junior Themers will be interested in the concept of "rootedness." In addition, this title has relevance for our work on "fake news," misinformation, and filter bubbles – or the "polititainment" and polarization which Sasse decries.

An insightful look at the current state of our political situation.Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author. All opinions are my own.

I thought this book was informative and made some very good points. Americans are disconnected from each other and suffer from acute loneliness. The author does a great job emphasizing these points through real events and research. I did get a bit confused and overwhelmed by the various topic changes within one chapter. I suppose this topic is so broad it's difficult to focus on one aspect because this disconnect is related to our changing demographics, technology and fundamental beliefs. Very interesting read.

Thank you Netgalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I will not be reviewing this book for publication. The ARC kindle edition was inadequate. it seems that many points of discussion was based on the "Scissors Graph" but this graph was unreadable on the Kindle (about location 412) . Perhaps related to this I found his 'success sequence" unbelievable and grossly oversimplified. He suggested following this sequence was a was an effective way out of poverty (only 3% of those following the sequence were poor) but the data backing up this assertion must have been somewhere in the graph I could not see. Soon after this I lost interest.

This is not a book about politics (if it was I would not be reading it) but that is not to say that politics does not come into play in the book. This is a book about how we became tribal and how we can start to fix that.
America is unique in the fact that we are a country of immigrants and we are not a country of shared heritage but America is an idea. This means it takes work to keep her stable. Sasse's theory is that we have become tribal through the breakdown of the community. We are more involved in our technology and do not take the time to build face to face relationships with people. He spoke about the idea of the mobile, the rooted, and the stuck. Each of these groups of people have their own issues. I am part of the mobile group (and my family has been for generations) so it is harder understand the rooted and the stuck. This does not help us communicate and empathize with each other.
I think my favorite part of the book was when he took on cable news and their part in the polarization of the country. Now there is probably very little (if anything) that Sasse and I would agree on policy wise but I could appreciate this book and the story he is trying to tell. I think I was more willing to give this book a try because of his background as an American History major and University President. This is a book more routed in history and facts as a result.
If you are someone who is interested in these types of micro-history books I would suggest giving it a try (it is in the same vane as a Malcolm Gladwell book). I would also say that if you are looking for a book to validate your political view point this is not your book.

Ben Sasse is a Republican senator from Nebraska. I do not always agree with him, but according to his book, Them: Why We Hate Each Other – And How to Heal, that's OK. This book talks about the circumstances that have exacerbated divisions in the United States, it provides guidance for how to see commonalities among one another and overcome political rifts.

I gave this book five stars because it was exactly the book I needed to read at exactly the right time. I feel that it is important to understand and follow current events, but the news often leaves me feeling angered rather than enlightened. Senator Sasse discusses why this anger exists and why many Americans see those who disagree with them as enemies.

The biggest thing I took away from this book is that if anything is going to change, I have to start with myself, my family and my community. I need to gain a deeper understanding of an issue instead of reading the snippet that Facebook provides me. I need to spend more time in a technology-free zone with my family, and I need to remember that there is a lot more to a person than his or her political views.

This is a valuable book that I will come back to time and again to keep me focused on what America’s all about.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced copy.

This week, I sat in a presentation from the Dallas Holocaust Museum (soon to be the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum) entitled “The 10 Stages of Genocide”. The stages were laid out by Dr. Gregory Stanton and popularized by Genocide Watch. The first two stages, as explained in the presentation, are natural and not too big of a problem if seen in isolation: Classification and Symbolization. As these first two stages were described, I thought of our political parties. We classify ourselves by political party, or sometimes others do the classifying for us. We even symbolize our political parties: blue/donkey for Democrats, red/elephant for Republicans. We do these with our favorite sports teams too. Relatively normal. The third stage, Discrimination, has thankfully not happened in relation to our political parties because they have been relatively balanced in their power. But what amazed me, when the presenter reached Stage 4, was that we in American politics are in the process of skipping right over Stage 3 completely. We are entering, if not already in, Stage 4 of the “10 Stages of Genocide”: Dehumanization. We think of our enemies as less than human. As enemies to be conquered. As Them.

Stage 6 is even more scary, as we see more than just shades of this one as well. Polarization drives everyone to one side or the other, as people are forced to choose. “You’re either with us or you’re against us”. “If you don’t support the Republican no matter what, you’re supporting the Democrats”. I am thankful that, in this time of massive polarization, there are still people in our government like Ben Sasse. This is not to say that Sasse is a moderate on the political spectrum; he one of the most conservative people in the Senate. He votes with President Trump only 87% of the time according to FiveThirtyEight, which sounds high but outlines his willingness to swim upstream: he falls in the same Trump Score range as Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, and the late great John McCain. This is because Sasse is conservative but not in the nebulous way that is defined by the whims of the two major political parties and their collective Us vs. Them mentality. Without a return back to normalcy that Sasse describes in his new book, Them, one of these two political parties will eventually consolidate power and we will continue our slide through the “10 Stages of Genocide”. Along the way, we will have lost what made us American.

In Them, Sasse makes a wonderful argument against what he calls the Anti-Tribe mentality (“the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, or basing your beliefs purely on what you are against) and makes a case for real, local tribes: those you can see, conversate with, and belong to. Sasse explains:
It turns out that the massive economic disruption that we entered a couple of decades ago and will be navigating for decades to come is depriving us psychologically and spiritually at the same time that it’s enriching us materially. The same technology that has liberated us from so much inconvenience and drudgery has also unmoored us from the things that anchor our identities. The revolution that has given tens of millions of Americans the opportunity to live like historic royalty has also outpaced our ability to figure out what community, friendships, and relationships should look like in the modern world. As reams of research now show, we’re richer and better-informed and more connected — and unhappier and more isolated and less fulfilled.

This is extremely important when all media is pushing us in the exact opposite direction, and America needs to listen before it is too late. I believe this is an important book for just that reason. Sasse has put a finger on exactly what everyone knows is the problem but no one has done anything about. Instead, we have just pointed fingers at the other side. “What-about-ism”, says Sasse, “is an intellectually vacuous way to live life — not to mention being a morally bankrupt way to raise children.”

That is what it always come back to for Sasse: how we are raising the next generation. His 2017 book, The Vanishing American Adult, laid out the many ways that Americans are failing in this regard, and Them continues the theme. Sasse has an answer to all of these issues and it is rediscovering our roots as Americans and humans:
What we need are new habits of mind and heart. We need new practices of neighborliness. We need to get our hands dirty replenishing the soil that nourishes rooted, purposeful lives. But how?

Our world is nudging us toward rootlessness, when only a recovery of rootedness can heal us.
He begins by describing the symptoms of our disease in compelling prose. But Sasse has specific prescriptions for remedying this rootlessness, don’t worry. He speaks in anything but generalities. I don’t want to ruin those for you by outlining them here. But his concept of rootedness is the key. Politics is not our savior, and we cannot rely on politicians to fix it. Politics isn’t even the most important civic issue. One last quote outlines this perfectly:
One of the core problems with our public life together is that we’re constantly failing to distinguish between politics and civics. Politics is about the use of power — how it is acquired and who wields it. Obviously, politics matters. But civics matters more. civics is about who we are as a people. A nation requires a framework of shared values, a set of core commitments.

That is what we are missing as a society, and politicians can’t bring it back. We have to do it ourselves. We are just lucky enough, it seems, to have one politician who realizes this and has a platform to tell us.

Go and buy or borrow Ben Sasse’s new book Them when it releases October 16th. He is someone that needs to be listened to, whether you agree with his politics or not. That’s kind of the point of the whole book. Don’t let politics divide us when something more important is at stake.

I received this book as an eARC courtesy of St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley, but my opinions are my own.