Divided We Fail started as a book. The site is what happened when the book needed to be more than pages.
Where it started
When I was a kid, my mother and I spent Sunday mornings in the church nursery instead of the service, watching the babies. To pass the time, she would start a conversation and take a side, and my job was to argue the other one, whatever it was, and however hard it was to defend.
The best gift my mother ever gave me was teaching me to see the world through the eyes of someone I disagree with.
I didn’t know it then, but those conversations taught me to understand people who don’t think the way I do, well enough, at least, to find a common language with them. That habit is at the center of everything on this site.
What I saw
Years later, a woman who had become like a second mother to me started telling me versions of events that didn’t match anything I could find. When I asked where she’d heard them, I went and looked. One “news outlet” took me only a few minutes to trace: a company with three employees running about 300 websites, each dressed up to look like a legitimate news organization, every domain registered within the previous six months.
Little by little, she fell deeper into a stream of misinformation, and the two of us ended up living in two different realities. We couldn’t agree on what was true, and eventually we couldn’t find a way to share the same world anymore.
I had just lost a job I loved to Covid, so I had time to look around. What I found was the same thing happening everywhere: families, friendships, and communities splitting apart, not only over what we should do, but over what is real.
The book
Divided We Fail is a book about where the country is, how it got here, and how we can fix it. It looks at the political and economic problems facing Americans and asks a different question: not just what is broken, but what would actually make things better. It is written for people who care deeply about what happens next, even when they don’t agree on how to get there.
The more I dug, the more I saw a country whose problems are real (too many people can no longer afford things that should be basic, and it keeps getting worse) and a public that can’t agree on the facts needed to fix them. So I asked myself a simple question: if I were in charge, what would I actually do? The book is my answer.
Why a website
When I brought a copy of the book to a family get-together, I found an even better reason to put it online. A relative I had always known as an avid reader told me she no longer had the patience to read books. After years of short videos and quick posts, she simply couldn’t focus long enough anymore. She isn’t alone; more people experience that every day.
A book also can’t keep up. Information changes day by day, and a printed page can’t show you who represents you, what your state’s election calendar says this week, how a bill really becomes law, or whether a number you saw on the news is true. So the site grew around the book. It has three jobs, matching the book’s own three questions:
- Where we are: plain, sourced facts about how people are actually doing.
- How we got here: the history and the mechanics of government, in language anyone can follow.
- How we can fix it: tools and next steps you can use, like finding your representatives and your next election.
Everything you need to understand your government is free, and it will stay that way. Members get the full online book and deeper tools, and their support is what keeps the rest free for everyone.
What we believe
We believe America is better than our divisions, and that beneath the shouting most of us want the same things: dignity, security, and a fair shot at a decent life. You can read the full list on our About page.
How we work
Two habits shape everything here. First, we try to offer an answer, not the answer, because a country of hundreds of millions has hundreds of millions of lived experiences. Second, we look for facts that both the left and the right can accept, and we are open about where the sources are and how we checked them.
You don’t have to take my word for anything. Every number on this site links to where it came from. Read more in How We Verify Our Data.
Who I am
I’m not a politician, a pundit, or a strategist, and nothing in my life story would have predicted this book. I grew up in a Minnesota town of about 1,500 people, one of four kids raised by a single mother. We never had much money, but she made sure we had every opportunity she could give us, and she taught us to respect everyone and to leave the world better than we found it. I took that last part seriously enough to become an Eagle Scout.
I sang tenor well enough to be one of 30 young musicians from across the state accepted into the first class of the Minnesota Center for Arts Education. Since then I’ve sold shower heads across the Western US, helped people choose kitchen cabinets and appliances at Menards (one of my favorite jobs), and once got paid to build sandcastles. I’ve been building websites since 1999, teaching myself as I went. I built this site, and I maintain it myself.
None of that is a political résumé. But it meant years of listening to ordinary people, from every kind of place, talk about their homes, their budgets, and their worries. Those are the people this site is for.
Come along
If I were in charge, I’d want to spend time in every state, not giving speeches, but working alongside people: serving lunch in a food line, picking up trash along a highway with a group of volunteers. Communities get rebuilt by people who show up, and you don’t need to be in charge to do that.
If something here helps you, use it. If something is wrong, tell us. And if you want to help, the best thing you can do is talk with someone you disagree with, and then use the tools here to do something about it together.