Earlier this week, our friends at Axios ran a piece that complements the previous coverage they’ve given to the Dignity Index. This time, they explored the forces that contribute to contempt under the headline, “Polarization is a choice, not a destiny.”

‍The column shared data that reveal that we are not as divided as we are led to believe. (Our colleagues at More in Common released a landmark study to this effect in 2019). Roughly 90% of Americans, according to Axios, agree on issues like the right to privacy, the right to vote, and the right to freedom of religion. Majorities in both parties have similar views on issues ranging from immigration to abortion. Even on guns, close to 80% of Americans agree.

Their conclusion is like ours: we don’t have a difference of opinion problem; we have a contempt problem.

As a country, we may not be as divided as we think on issues, but the “outrage industrial complex” of social media, news media, and politics is indeed polarizing and often hateful. “(F)ringe views and edge cases are being shamelessly amplified by social media and politicians,” Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei report. There’s little appetite in the media for serious discussions of policy and even less for the significant bipartisan progress we’re making on challenges from green energy to rising wages to infrastructure to poverty reduction. The leaders of partisan media and politics are inflaming us: they elevate the most extreme characterizations of the other side to raise money, grab ratings, and get famous. Contempt is a big business in America, and it’s lying to us.

The column elicited “a flood of reactions” according to Axios. From what we can tell, that flood reinforces our view that there’s a huge hunger for a change in our political and cultural discourse. Most Americans want problems to be solved, divisiveness to be eased, and connections to be strengthened. There are very few of us who enjoy living in a state of devotional anger and hopelessness about the future. The vast majority of us want the dehumanizing to end.

Last week, students at Notre Dame picked up the banner of the Dignity Index to challenge their fellow students and faculty members to do just that. They’re joining students who are leading a dignity movement on campuses ranging from the University of Wisconsin Steven's Point to Brigham Young to the University of Virginia. They’re moving beyond generalities and using the Dignity Index to challenge themselves to change. K-12 educators are doing the same, using the Index to teach children how to disagree with dignity. They teach children the Index and show how damaging it is to slide down the scale into contemptuous and hateful language. The slogan in the Salt Lake City Utah public schools is “5 and Up,” to promote healthy and effective ways of speaking one’s mind without treating the other with contempt.

These students and educators are telling a different story of us. The outrage industrial complex would have us believe that we’re destined to hate each other more and more as the presidential election unfolds but we don’t have to. The outrage industrial complex would have us believe that people from the other party are all dangerous and crazy. They’re not. The outrage industrial complex wants us to keep watching fringe stories as if they’re everywhere—they’re not. The outrage industrial complex wants us to keep scrolling through stories of extreme divisiveness as if extremists are coming to get us but they’re not.  Perhaps most deceptively, they want us to keep funding negative political action committees and campaigns because they’re going to expose just how sick the other side really is. It isn’t.

The story in Axios and the quickly expanding adoption of the Dignity Index is just the beginning of a new and powerful dignity movement, and that movement needs all of us. We have the power to “pop the reality distortion bubble” that Axios suggests. We can refuse to give to politicians who solicit us with contempt and hatred for the other side. We can turn off news outlets that are blatantly partisan and inflammatory. We can stop reading stories where the headlines are shameless appeals to snark and cynicism about other Americans. If we do, we’re not only more likely to feel better; we’re also more likely to find the truth.

I’d go one step further: it’s now our civic duty to stop funding the media and politics of contempt. There’s a new issue in America: contempt. It’s as dangerous—or more so—than any foreign threat. And it’s based on the lie that you should hate other Americans. There’s nothing less American than hating other Americans. And it’s past time for the hating to stop.

Anything less than a dignity movement that engages all of us runs the risk that we will share in the responsibility for the destruction of the country that so many of us love and believe in and so sincerely want to make better.

And making America better is a choice we can all make. In unity,Tim