Episode 305- Voices Beyond The Partisan Echo. With David Dennison

When outrage becomes the default setting, thinking gets outsourced to the loudest tribe. We invited Substack writer and teacher David Dennison to help map a way back to clear thought, using real-world examples to show how independent journalism can resist the dopamine rush of instant certainty and invite deeper inquiry instead.

We start with the state of media: why partisanship sells, how predictable framing keeps audiences hooked, and what reader-supported platforms like Substack make possible. David unpacks how dissenting takes can live without an editor’s gatekeeping, and how basic tools—public statutes, Google, even ChatGPT—let anyone verify claims before a narrative hardens. A fast-moving Minnesota incident becomes a case study in how rapid storylines outpace facts, why legal context matters for public judgment, and how speed can erase nuance when lives and policies are at stake.

From there we tackle immigration and identity. We separate humane admissions from willful evasion, argue for policy that acknowledges real invitations and real risks, and push back on the false binary of open versus closed borders. On race and identity politics, we revisit the cost of insulating weak arguments with moral intimidation, and make a case for liberal principles: free inquiry, evidence-first claims, and respect for both progress made and work unfinished. Finally, we talk about classrooms as places to teach, not recruit, and why safeguarding neutral learning protects trust and helps students build durable judgment in a noisy world.

If you crave analysis that prizes clarity over team colors, this conversation is for you. Subscribe to The Common Bridge on Substack, share this episode with a friend who values nuance, and leave a review to help others find thoughtful, independent voices.

Transcript

Meet The Guest And Mission

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to season seven of the Common Bridge, hosted by Richard Helpie, a leading analyst, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. Now expanded with healthcare, education, finance, science, and world affairs bridges, the podcast, now in its seventh season, with an audience of over 7 million worldwide, explores issues in a fiercely nonpartisan way. Find us at the Common Bridge at Substack.com, YouTube, and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

Hello, welcome to the Common Bridge. I'm your host, Rich Helpie. Today we're continuing our series on Substack writers and contributors. And from the page Aged Well, we have none other than Mr. David Dennison. Good morning or good evening, Dave. How are you today?

SPEAKER_02 0:50

I'm well and good evening and good morning. I am in Chi, Thailand, uh, which is where I've lived for about nine years.

SPEAKER_03 1:02

So coming from literally halfway across the world and an astute observer and an excellent writer on Substack. Of course, most of us on Substack are reader supported. So throughout this episode, I'm going to be reminding folks of that. If you like what you hear, or if you don't like what you hear, please consider subscribing to Dave Denison at AgedWell or indeed The Common Bridge, or buy us a cup of coffee or tip or whatever. Because I think this independent journalism is so important. And that's why we are featuring Substack writers. So, Dave, our audience likes to know a little bit about the folks that are coming on the show. So, do you mind maybe filling in where were your early days spent and what's been your professional and personal arc? What's brought you to the point where you're authoring on Substack today?

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Sure. So I have an unusual and very eclectic background. Uh, I think it's fair to say. I'm a teacher and I'm a writer. Uh, before I did this, I was a stage actor. And before I did that, and in between stage acting bouts, uh, I worked in politics. So I was a senatorial aide for Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the late Senator Carl Levin, I'm sorry to say. Um, and I found that work enormously gratifying and also a little bit frustrating because one thing that I wasn't allowed to do when I was in that job was write. I was not allowed to publish anything under my own name because it had to be, you know, I was I was taxpayer funded. Uh, and so I couldn't be partisan and I couldn't be saying things that weren't going to be representative of my boss. So I ended up gaining all kinds of experience and all kinds of insights from talking to constituents and from working on some of these issues. And I didn't have a high-level job uh in in his office. But once I left that line of work and I did start writing more seriously, I kind of dithered for a long time, just sort of posting uh my thoughts on Facebook to an audience of, you know, the 20 or so people that would like it. And then I decided to make a try for Substack. I'd been encouraged to do it. And I don't know what took me so long because uh Substack has been hugely rewarding uh for a lot of the reasons you articulated just now. Uh, that I think independent journalism is so important. I think it's so important now. Uh I hope we'll get to talk about that.

Why Independent Journalism Matters

SPEAKER_03 3:27

Well, maybe we ought to go into that right now. If people were not going to independent journalism on places like Substack, what's their alternative? And why is Substack a better option?

SPEAKER_02 3:39

Well, I think their alternative is or alternatives are increasingly just abysmal and and shameful. And I think that there is so there is almost no legacy media now that is truly neutral and that is truly dispassionate about what they are reporting on. And part of the reason for that isn't their fault, part of it is because partisanship sells. Uh, if you've got a tribe behind you, you're gonna find an audience for pretty much whatever slop you put out. And that trend did not start with the left and it did not start recently, but it has accelerated. And so if you were looking for information that, or even you're just looking for a take that isn't straight down the line red or straight down the line blue, you really kind of have to search for that and you have to cultivate your own media ecosystem that's gonna feed you that. And that's one of the things I like about Substack. I like that I can post something that is discordant from things that I have posted previously. I like that I can show it to an audience that is used to one thing and now is seeing a different thing, and they're not just gonna set their hair on fire.

SPEAKER_03 4:57

I love the way you put that. And I like to say that my brand promise for the common bridge is there's something in every episode for everyone to not like, that it's not a place for affirmation programming, that you're going to hear different things. Interestingly, on a different channel, I was messaging with a colleague of longstanding, and he sent me a New York Times report of the Trump finances, and I sent him back a laughing emoji, you know, laughing so hard I'm crying. And I'm like, seriously, you're seriously quoting the New York Times. And I sent him a link to uh a Substack writer, and also I asked him, I said, have you looked at the C-SPAN interview with Tom Holman? He hadn't even heard about it, but he went and watched it and it was like, wow, I didn't know that that's what the reporting was like. And this is where I'm maybe a little Pollyannish about it, a little overly optimistic. But your average person just trying to go to work, trying to build their life, and they want to be informed, and they're being deliberately misinformed. So now one more person saying, Well, wait a minute, I don't know why I believed this in the first place.

unknown 6:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:11

So I think it's a great thing they're doing here.

SPEAKER_02 6:13

Well, I appreciate that, Rich. Uh, and you know, I think it when I said a minute ago that I think this is an especially important time for it. Yeah, you know, I made a, I tried to make my it was hard to do, but I tried to make my list of sort of top three things that I wanted to talk about or that I'm often writing about. Um, and number one on that list, and really everything else is downstream of it, is hyper partisanship. And I know that's kind of an old man, you know, you kids get off my lawn thing to complain about, but it's very real and it's very important now when the things that the two sides believe and the things that we are arguing over are so new and and are so different. We are not just rehashing fights that we had 10 years ago. You know, when we were arguing over, uh when I went to work for the Senate, it was right around the time the Affordable Care Act was being debated. And that was interesting and that was a tense fight, but it was also kind of a rehash of a fight we had just had 10 or 15 years before that. Um Obamacare was not materially different from Hillary care and from Romney care, and whatever side of that you were on, you'd probably been on that side 10 years earlier. Well, we're not fighting about that stuff anymore. We're fighting about new stuff. And love him or hate him, and everyone's got an opinion there, Donald Trump is a different political animal, and we are seeing a different style of governance, and we are seeing issues being kind of pushed inside the Overton window that never were before. And I think that makes this a uniquely dangerous time to be tethered to a partisan movement because well, how are you going to be able to think about this if the only place you're getting your information is MSNBC or is Fox?

Media Bias And Building Your Own Feed

SPEAKER_03 8:00

Precisely, and they're so predictable. Now, the good news, the way I see it, is that people are reading some of the legacy media and watching it, knowing they're being lied to and saying, Well, we know this isn't the real story. Case in point in Minnesota, we have a couple tragedies. And within minutes, we have one side saying, Well, this guy came rushing out of nowhere and brandishing and threatening officers, their defensive rounds fired. And similarly, from the other side, it was, well, this guy was just working in the ICU, and ICE agents were pelled down and stormed the hospital and murdered him on the scene. Yeah. And these are literally within minutes versus the call had to say, oh no, we need to find out what happened. Let's investigate and get the facts. Sure. And people got locked into their positions. So, by way of example, I had a person say, Well, the ICE agents are not allowed to make arrests. Well, no, they are if you're impeding. And it was so easy to find that, but people were dug into that position before they did a scintilla of research. It took like literally two seconds to find out that that wasn't true, but they wanted to believe it.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

The the investigative tools that we have available to us, and I'm not talking about anything fancy, I'm talking about Google, I'm talking about Chat GPT. It these are very accessible, they are very quick, they are very comprehensive, they are mostly very good. And you can actually, you know, federal law is not secret, it's public. You can go look it up right now, and you can very, very, very easily find things out. Like, well, yes, ICE actually can arrest American citizens if they are engaged in obstruction. That is just a fact. That's not an opinion, that's not a take, it's just what our laws say. And I think I I've been posting a lot about I'm running out of steam for it because I've been posting about it so much. But I think I had the same frustration that you did after the tragedies involving Renee Good and Alex Predi, that if you are diehard Trumper, well, these guys are domestic terrorists. And obviously Alex Predi had two mags there, so he was going to kill everybody. Well, no, he wasn't. Come on. But people aren't stopping to do that 10, 15 seconds of research that would let them know what he was doing was actually highly illegal. And had ICE successfully arrested him without killing him, he could have been looking at a year or more in prison. Now that's just a fact. And that has to be factored into how we assess these matters, particularly if we're going to spend so much time talking about them and if we're going to be drawing sweeping policy conclusions based on them.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Before we dive back into today's enlightening discussion, we have a quick message for all you Common Bridge enthusiasts out there. Did you know that you can find this episode and over 300 more on Substack as part of the Common Bridge series? You can also find written columns and opinions as well. Subscribe at the Commonbridge.substack.com for a full Common Bridge experience. There you can comment and express your opinion on all the topics we cover on this and the past seven seasons of our podcasts. If you'd rather support the show without subscribing, you can do so with Zell at rich at richardhelpie.com or using Venmo at Richard-CBridge. Thanks for listening. Now back to the episode.

SPEAKER_03 11:43

Similarly, beyond the law, can we agree that confronting armed law enforcement with a firearm tucked in your belt is not really a good strategy for long-term survival. I mean, in some respects, you could say it looks like suicide by cop. Now, do I think he went out there intentionally wanting to end his life that day? No. But there were so many opportunities to turn away from that tragic outcome. And look, the officers that are trying to make that arrest, they're in an environment where they can't hear each other because whistles, car horns, screaming, they hear the word gun. I don't know what I would do under that circumstance. And to say that these are bloodthirsty people, I don't think can hold up given the totality of the circumstance. But again, we've got a guy sent into the breach here by a governor who believes that he doesn't need to follow federal law, same laws that we've had forever, same techniques, by the way, that existed under other presidents, including President Obama, yet now it's a problem. And people need to die for that. It makes zero sense to me.

SPEAKER_02 13:05

None. And you know, I think you and I can say that, but I've been alarmed at how few others seem to be able to bring themselves to. And it for me, this one I really like. I'm new to exploring this kind of non-partisan space. I used to be fiercely partisan. I was a true blue Democrat for my whole adult life. And I like to think that even had that still been the case for me, I would have looked at something like this and gone, well, you know what? There was actually never a time when interfering with armed federal agents and resisting arrest when they're trying to get cuffs on you was something that you were allowed to do. So why it should be taken as a given that, well, of course he was in the right. No, this is just protesting. This is First Amendment. Well, this is not First Amendment. The First Amendment does not protect our right to behave that way. And his heart could have been every bit in the right place, and it still would have been just such a profoundly dangerous thing to do. You referenced Tim Waltz. I have been utterly disgusted with Waltz, and he is not the worst one, for sending these for winding these people up and sending them, as you say, into the breach with apparently very little awareness of how physically dangerous and how illegal what they are doing is. And this is before we even touch the morality of what they're doing, which is another point that mildly confuses me, because stopping ICE agents from making arrests, arrests of undocumented immigrants, was not ever a position of the Democratic Party to which I belonged. So there were people who were certainly more permissive about immigration, and the right was generally more restrictive. That was kind of, those were where the polls were on this debate. And now increasingly we seem to be moving in two simultaneous directions where members of the left are increasingly, even if they're not doing it directly, having to defend open borders, which the last polling I saw, something like 6% of Americans think that open borders is a good idea. And also, single digits of Americans think that we should shut the whole project down entirely. Nobody really thinks this. So why are we getting forced into these camps? I don't understand it.

Hyperpartisanship And New Political Fights

SPEAKER_03 15:19

Well, we are getting forced into these camps by that media ecosystem that is designed to split us. And look, I have been an independent voter, ticket splitter for lots of independent candidates for my entire voting life. And I try to be reasonably educated about the issues. And I actually read position papers, I read legislation and such. And something always happened before, and then there's always a consequence for what's happening now. So when I look at this and say, all right, who the victims are in this situation? So we had a period of about four years of open borders, and to your point, not a single Democrat or Republican today in any elected office is saying we need to go back to that policy. So that is evidence that it was a bad idea. But now imagine you or me or anyone we know living in Central America. Let's say they have a skill, let's say they're a welder, and they have a wife and maybe a couple kids, and they get word that the president of the United States is saying, come in. We're not going to enforce the border law. You can get asylum, you can get an app, you can pick where you want to go into the center of the country, you can get housing, medical care, and a job. I might reasonably look at that and say, you know, dear, this is our chance to build a better life and come to the United States of America just like every other immigrant. Now, can't we separate those folks from the people that came over the border were offered that, but they were among the two million getaways? And like, why wouldn't you take all of those benefits and instead run into the country? And of course, the folks that are getting apprehended have reprehensible criminal records. But can't we all agree that that young family with the welder is in a different category? And is it that hard to find them and accommodate them? Because come on, the president of the United States invited them in.

SPEAKER_02 17:34

It doesn't seem that hard to me. Well, and it never was before, which is why I think it's so hair pulling now that we don't seem to be able to find that common space. Because thinking, well, yes, we want you, but we don't want you. And we want you, but not you, was something we always did. Our entire system of immigration has always been predicated on that idea that we want who we want, we don't want who we don't want, and it is for us to decide those things. But this is now on both sides of it getting filtered through this, for me, very new moral lens of well, no, you can't you can't pick and choose because all people have the same rights, all people have the same inherent worth. And who are we to say that you can come, but you can't? Well, every country on earth since the beginning of countries has done this. So why should it be any different for us? And of course, then you've got folks on the other side who know none of them can come. We don't want any of them. Well, that was also never something we did. So that's new too.

SPEAKER_03 18:32

Indeed, it is, and it's an unreasonable position on both sides. And yet, if you try to say, like, let's be on the common bridge, let's talk, let's find where we agree. Well, no, we can't do that because you're a traitor to your cause. And I've been slammed from both sides very heartily. But let me interject here that people like Dave Denison that are writing on Aged Well, that in addition to his teaching job in Thailand, is trying to make a living as a writer and trying to bring this to light. And he doesn't have to answer to an editorial apparatus that's designed to mislead you. So if you're subscribing any place today, think about going to aged well. If you got a little left over for the common bridge, we'd like that too. But try to help expand these types of discussions. Dave, beyond the media and the immigration matter, what other things have been top of mind for you?

SPEAKER_02 19:35

So I really became right around the time I left uh my job as a Senate aide, was when uh this political force that we now call woke or wokeness or identity politics or whatever have you, we we've never really settled on a good term for that, um, was right when that was on its profound upswing. And so a lot of what I started writing about when I started writing and posting, which again was to my Facebook friends, was in that era. And that was when for me the Democratic Party and the whole really left wing of the country started taking a turn into territory that it would be wrong to say it was too extreme for me, because saying it's too extreme implies that a watered-down version of it would have been palatable for me, and it wouldn't have been. It, you know, I'm a John Stuart Mill liberal, and this stuff was so profoundly illiberal, and especially on issues uh pertaining to identity, and really even more particular than that, pertaining to race, uh, that I grew up with a sense of optimism that I was educated all about, I didn't live through it, I'm not old enough, but I was educated about the country's dark racial past. And I grew up really thinking, okay, we're gonna move past that. I'm gonna see a day when we move past that. And my kids are not even gonna know what that was when everyone was at each other's throats racially. And I think that the identitarian movement on the left just ripped that scab off of our body politic and has sent us just hurtling so many steps backwards. Uh, in so I write a lot about race, and I do that, I try to do it from as neutral a perspective as possible, but more often than not, that places me in company with the right because the left went in, I think, such a damaging direction with it.

Minnesota Case Study And Rapid Narratives

SPEAKER_03 21:36

I found it frankly somewhat amusing watching the extreme of identity politics get unwrapped. Like one of the things I've chuckled about is the Asian American Pacific Islanders will have a month for them. And if you actually know the history, they tried to do very bad things to each other. But somebody said, Well, they're all kind of young. So we'll put them in a box. Yeah. It's supremely stupid. And I think was it the 1619 project that if I got the year right, that was the real founding of the country. So I read that. And the it was hilarious because they actually said that since slave owners use something that looked like a spreadsheet, and today's business uses spreadsheets, therefore, today's business model is racist. That was literally a point, a proof point. And you just had to howl with laughter. And yet the story about where slavery was eradicated, right? It still is going on in the world today, but where did it happen? It was, you know, England and the United States. And our racial history has not been good. I lived through a lot of it. You know, the Civil Rights Act had to be passed in my lifetime. We saw governors in schoolhouse doors. Eisenhower and Kennedy had to deploy the military. So those were dark days. And we've made a lot of progress. And we need to recognize the progress that has been made and continue to work on it. But we're not at each other's throat.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

Yeah. And I, you know, I started by saying that almost everything that I write about is downstream of this issue of hyperpartisanship. And race absolutely falls under that category. So you mentioned the 1619 project and how preposterously ahistorical it was, and really just what a lousy document it was. I wish that we could have all hysterically laughed at it. But the real story, in my view, is not just that somebody put out a bad treatise on the history of race in the United States, but that at the time it came out, didn't it win the Pulitzer Prize? I mean, you couldn't laugh at it, was my point. You couldn't laugh at it without risking quite profound social sanction and without seeming to be on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of what was increasingly being viewed as a moral issue. That no, no, no, no, no, you must nod along with this because if you don't, you are morally suspect. And if you do, you get a head pat. Good for you. So this can't be how we do it. This we can't just say, well, this is my camp and you're in your camp, and my camp is right and your camp is wrong always. Uh we have to be able to call out nonsense. And of course, there is plenty of racial nonsense on the right to call out. Um, it's just that we don't tend to have as much difficulty doing that. You're not gonna get canceled if you call out racists on the right. Uh, you might get grumbled, you might get yelled at on Twitter, but that's the worst that's gonna happen to you. You're not gonna lose your job, you're not gonna lose your good name, you're not gonna become unemployable. And that period, I don't know. I mean, I I don't feel Pollyanna about this because I think that may have set us back so seriously that I don't I now don't know that I will live to see it repaired.

SPEAKER_03 25:11

In the history of the country, two groups were statutorily discriminated against. They are blacks, African Americans, and women. And over the years, laws have changed and perhaps attitudes uh have not. We all saw the movie The Green Book. It was horrible. I've traveled with black colleagues and I've noticed some subtle racism, various examples. So we need to acknowledge that that exists and continue to speak against it and recognize people for their accomplishments and provide everybody the opportunity to achieve and to find their best place in life. That is much different than saying we are going to appoint somebody or promote somebody because of their race or because of their gender. Let's make it not a barrier, but let's not make it the way that somebody else gets discriminated against. And that's where I come down on education is so important. And you're involved in that every day. So try again, remind our listeners, readers, and viewers of the subscriber-supported Aged Well and David Dettison on Substack and the Common Bridge. What do you want to say today, if anything, about education and what role you're playing today?

SPEAKER_02 26:38

So uh I don't teach history, I teach drama. I'm certified as a history teacher, but uh I, you know, I get to have fun in education and I get to have fun with kids all day. My job is awesome. And a lot of the things that I write about simply don't come up, and nor should they, because they don't need to. They don't, and even if I were doing what I was doing in the United States, they just wouldn't need to. And I have yet to see any evidence that anything good comes from mapping these increasingly extreme political views onto subjects that have nothing to do with them. So if you want to get a bunch of kids in a room and you want to teach them how to act and you want to teach them how to express themselves and have confidence and carry themselves well, you ought to be able to do that without that process being haunted by these goofy political movements. And so effectively, you know, I mean, am I am I bringing my writing material into the classroom? Hell no. Nor would I ever dream of it, because I think that would be, I think I would already have lost if I started to do that. And I think that when I've especially I don't teach in a public school, of course, but when I see public schools doing this, I circling back to my time working for the Senate, I took it very seriously that that had to be a nonpartisan job. I had to be there for everybody. I had to be there for the Republican callers, I had to be there for the Democratic callers, I had to be there for Republican cities, I had to be there for Democratic cities. And it's the same in education. You kids are malleable and they're innocent. And you need to meet them where they are, you need to educate them faithfully. And I believe that when you are crossing the line from educating them into activating them, into indoctrinating them, you are breaking a sacred covenant.

Law, Facts, And Digital Research

SPEAKER_03 28:35

I really admire your phrasing about activating them. Uh, 10 years ago, when uh Donald Trump was first elected to presidency, a University of Michigan professor, and I had this is firsthand information, teaching a German class the next day said, I know that all of you must be very sad, and you probably want time to mourn or protest. So we are going to not give any more assignments or any more tests for the rest of the semester. Everybody gets an A. And it was ridiculous. The only answer should have been we're here to learn German, take out your book or your iPad, turn to this page, and let's get on with conjugating verbs in German. It's why this professor decided they could take tuition money and not do the job is beyond me. And it's gotten progressively worse since then. That people think if you start with a conclusion, and if your conclusion is that the other side is awful, then everything is justified. And that's what leads us to violence in the street, ultimately.

SPEAKER_02 29:48

Yes, it is. And isn't that convenient for you? Because that lets you off the hook for anything you might want to do. If you are good and if they are evil, what would you not do to resist evil, right? What covenants wouldn't you break? What lines wouldn't you cross? What lessons wouldn't you drill into your students if it's really in service of fighting evil? And I think that this granting of moral permission to break rules in service of some greater good, of course, as defined by you, uh is another problem that maybe we'll have to talk about on another podcast, because I think it is another one of those umbrella issues that just touches everything.

SPEAKER_03 30:28

Absolutely. Well, Dave, I appreciate your thinking, your writing. It's a pleasure to meet you and hear you speak. So let me offer to you the opportunity just to bring us home here, wrap us up. If there's another topic or any closing comments or anything we didn't talk about, what do you want the listeners, readers, and viewers of the Common Bridge to hear from you today?

SPEAKER_02 30:51

Well, I'll I'll take it back to how you started it. Uh, support independent journalism. Even if you're not going to pay for it, which you don't have to at Aged Well and you don't have to always at the Common Bridge. What you do when you click that subscribe button, when you click that like button, when you share something that we've written is you enhance our visibility. You make what we do more viable. Uh so if the things I've been saying here have gotten you nodding along and you thought, well, I really don't get that on CNN anymore. And I really don't get that in the pages of the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. Well, you can get it somewhere else. Uh, and and the more people who choose to get it somewhere else, the more robust an ecosystem this is going to be.

SPEAKER_03 31:33

Heartily agree. We've been talking today with David Dennison of Age Well in our Substack Writers and Contributors series. And with our guest, David Dennison, this is your host, Rich Helpie, signing off on the Common Bridge.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

Thank you for joining us on the Common Bridge, where we continue to seek clarity across divided lines. Subscribe and support the Common Bridge on Substack, YouTube, and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Until next time, we invite you to stay informed, stay engaged, and help build a bridge of common understanding.