I wrote as a layman in the political arena, aiming to find out what a casual reader, armed with my model of confusion dynamics, could learn about the hidden disarray in these domains. I satisfied myself that I could apply the model and could trace the operation of some of the sources and coping methods described in that theory. I returned in 1997, this time to test the model in more detail using the recent revelations about confusion in the White House during the Vietnam War. I put up on this site the results of applying FCMs to that conflict. You will find a brief summary of those forecasts on the Kosovo section of this site.
Much more detail is available in the book version.
When you get rid of confusion by finding an enemy, compassion gets dissolved in the acid of dismissal and hate. Having rid yourself of confusion by means of rigid oversimplification of complex issues, you see only the other's confusion. In issues like these, where the pros and cons are not as clear-cut as the two sides might claim, what happens when we begin to see how someone could have adopted the opposite view. To see that they were coping with the same underlying ambiguity and confusion that I resolved by taking my particular stand. Studying confusion can provide enemies with common ground for mutual understanding.