Countering the bizarre world of Trump: Transforming conflict from destructive to constructive and productive with Mediation/Alternative Dispute Resolution

Mohandas Gandhi is credited with being the grandfather of mediation-Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) when he was a young lawyer. Unlike his training or normal law practice, he brought the parties together in his office one time and helped them work out a deal in which everyone won. Even though it meant he would not be profiting from trial, possible appeal, and all the expenses of doing that billable work, he wrote later that, "at last I had learnt the true profession of the law." The first law school ADR courses were developed in the late 1940s. 

Diplomats are trained in this competency and can be put to work to manage the diminution of Trump's power in many scenarios, especially when synthesized with political organizing of civil society so that, once again, Trump can be divided from his normal allies instead of maintaining his dominance over what is actually a fragile coalition. White nationalists who visualize a theocracy have been loyal to Trump, but they are a minority. Working class people who have been afraid of immigrants taking their jobs are not, in the majority, enemies of democracy who wish to replace it with Christian domination. Trump's support can be targeted with specific tactics and initiatives meant to reveal just how separable the demographic components of his support really are. 

One of the primary skills that mediators employ is "the work before the work," or assessment. Civil society organizers refer to this generally as power analysis, but mediators carry it a step further by caucusing with those who can answer this question, "What does a good outcome look like to you?" Eliciting these answers from those who are deciders or who are influencers and then doing the work that helps create potential options that can help divide Trump's groupings from each other is a clear step toward regaining leverage.