Polarized! The Case for Civility in the Time of Trump

An Experiment in Civil Discourse on Facebook

By: Jeff Rasley

Narrated by: Gregg Robinson

Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

In a culture of outrage and siloing, social media is the go-to place to attack and to hide. Users rant and vent, and they huddle in like-minded silos. Social media encourages impulsive and angry responses to tweets or posts that irritate us. It also allows us to avoid challenges to our conventional wisdom. We can block, unfriend, and hunker down in private groups. Social media has so far aggravated, rather than helped to cure, ideological polarization and partisanship.

Is there a higher and better use?

Facebook is the largest forum in the history of humankind for free and open communication among citizens. It can be used to engage in meaningful conversations about important political, social, and economic issues. The choice is ours to make.

As is demonstrated in Jeff Rasley's latest book, “regular folks” can use their social networks for civil discussion and debate, and then for positive political action. Or, they can follow the lead of President Trump to tweet insults and ridicule political opponents. Who do we want to be as a nation?

The Case for Civility exposes the causes and effects of hyper-partisanship. It offers a "modest proposal" to treat the symptoms of toxic polarization using social media. An experiment in Facebook based on the values of civility, tolerance, pragmatism, and moderation proves there is a cure.

Rasley is the author of nine other books, including Godless - Living a Valuable Life Beyond Beliefs and Bringing Progress to Paradise, a memoir about adventure and philanthropy in the Nepal Himalayas.

©2017 Jeff Rasley (P)2017 Jeff Rasley

needs editing

This book has some serious QC issues that need to be fixed. if it does get fixed sometime soon i would gladly give the book another try.

Polarized

I was interested to find out if we can all just get along.It looks like the answer is 'NO'. Facebook may not be the best place to do this kind of research,as noted by the author,you can find someone to back up whatver side you are on. Gregg Robinson was a fine narrator.
I was given this book by the narrator,author or publisher free for an honest review.

Good story bad editing

I got this ARC via audiobook boom and this is my voluntary review. The editing process was skipped it seems. The overall information was good but the presentation took away from it. I agree with several of the things included and know that in spite of our history and in spite of our present America is better than this. My prayers are that God will not take His hands off of America because if He does we are a lost nation. We can do better and I know we will get better. One tiny group with power that they are misusing will not destroy America. But each of us must use common sense and not let someone else tell us what is truth especially when that person lies constantly. Fix the parts that need editing both word and audio and you have a good book.

Not Good

Bad info, bad narration, bad book.
This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review.

Difficult to listen to if you are non-Democrat

I had a hard time getting through this book. The author speaks of Facebook as an open place to voice political views in a civil manner where in 2016 Facebook was already well under scrutiny for banning users who differed in it's way of thinking. FB was already pushing it's political agenda on all users whether you wanted it or not. I had hopes that the author would do more investigating than what he did. Saying ABC, CBS and NBC as being unbiased where politics is concerned is laughable at best. I do agree however that the internet does have information out there for all of us to attain so we, the people, can make a better informed opinion on what is going on in our country and the world today than any main stream media will give. I respect the author voted for the Democratic party for president but to not investigate all topics brought up in his book by all sources available, to me, is irresponsible. I am a registered Democrat but I will vote for whomever I feel will properly represent me in the government, be it Liberal, Republican, Democrat, etc. Yes, America has become polarized since President Donald Trump started his campaign to become President. And yes, it is a sad state of affairs for this to happen but we are all in this together and I hope everyone will do their own research/investigating to learn what is truly going on in the political arena.

The narration could have been so much better. Gregg Robinson sounded like he was standing in a large empty room reading this book and he sounded more robotic than anything else. He has a nice voice and did read at an overall decent pace, I just wish he had varied his voice a bit more. Also the editing totally stunk.

Overall, I really can't recommend this book to anyone and can only say, if you want to know what is going on with our government then do the research yourself and form your own opinions.

I was given this free review copy audio book at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

some production issues

The narration itself was fine (if a little robotic), but I did notice some glitches in the audio: cut-off sentences, missing words, etc. It wasn't frequent, but it was a little frustrating, especially when it cut off in the middle of a thought or a point being made. At first I thought the app was skipping, but whenever I'd rewind the jump would always happen in the same place(s).

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.