Opinion | From Belfast to the Mitten: How our words can lower the temperature

Recently, we traveled to Belfast with a group of American faith and civic leaders to learn about healing and reconciliation in deeply divided communities. Nearly three decades after the Good Friday Agreement helped bring an end to much of the violence known as The Troubles, Belfast still offers important lessons about civic resilience — and one lesson stood out above all others: The language people use can either inflame conflict or make compromise possible.

side-by-side photos of two women smiling. — Former state Senators Rebekah Warren, D-Ann Arbor, and Tonya Schuitmaker, R-Lawton, are senior advisors to Michiganders for Civic Resilience, which focuses on reducing political and identity-based violence and restoring faith in civic institutions. (Courtesy photos)

Michigan is not Northern Ireland. We are not living through decades of armed conflict. But we are experiencing something quieter and potentially corrosive: the normalization of dehumanizing political language that deepens distrust and raises the risk of real-world violence.

If we want to prevent that slide, we should pay attention to what communities elsewhere have learned about lowering the temperature.

In Northern Ireland, violence did not begin with weapons. It began with stories people told about one another — stories that framed neighbors as enemies, traitors, or existential threats.

That dynamic can feel familiar today.

Across our political landscape, opponents are increasingly described as “destroying the country,” “illegitimate,” or even “enemies” rather than fellow citizens with different views. That shift — from disagreement to delegitimization — is dangerous. Once people believe political opponents are fundamentally threatening or less deserving of participation, extreme actions become easier to justify.

The encouraging news is that language can also work in the opposite direction. It can create space for disagreement without dehumanization.

One of the breakthroughs behind the Good Friday Agreement was a gradual move away from zero-sum rhetoric. Instead of framing politics as total victory or defeat, leaders increasingly focused on finding arrangements both communities could live with.

That shift mattered. It reframed politics from a battle into a shared problem-solving exercise.

Here in Michigan, that might mean resisting the temptation to describe every policy dispute as “the end of democracy” or every political setback as catastrophic. It means critiquing ideas and decisions without condemning entire groups of people.

A core principle of the Northern Ireland peace process was mutual recognition. Groups with profoundly different histories and beliefs acknowledged that each side had a legitimate place in the political system.

That did not require agreement. It required acceptance of one another’s right to participate.

Today, when people say things like “their voters don’t matter” or “they shouldn’t even be allowed to run,” it weakens the democratic habits that allow divided societies to function peacefully.

A healthier standard sounds more like this: “I strongly disagree with them, but they represent real people whose voices deserve to be heard.”

We were also reminded in Belfast that precision matters. Inflamed rhetoric thrives on vagueness, while constructive dialogue depends on specificity.

There is a meaningful difference between saying “They’re corrupt and dangerous” and saying “I oppose this policy because I believe it will hurt my community.” One invites outrage. The other invites debate.

Another lesson from Northern Ireland is that peace was not built only by political leaders. It was sustained through regular interaction among ordinary people who had spent years avoiding one another.

That resonates here in Michigan, where many of us increasingly live in separate informational and social worlds — different news sources, different online spaces and different assumptions about reality itself. Isolation hardens stereotypes. Conversation softens them.

None of this requires abandoning strongly held beliefs or avoiding difficult debates. Healthy democracies depend on vigorous disagreement. But disagreement works best when it is grounded in shared humanity rather than mutual contempt.

The lesson from Northern Ireland is not that conflict disappears. It is that disagreement can be handled in ways that strengthen civic trust instead of destroying it.

Michigan does not need a peace accord. But we may need a reset in how we speak to one another.

Because long before violence appears in actions, it often begins with words.

And that means the work of lowering the temperature can begin with us.