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Marco Petracca's avatar

I love the power of your essay - and the urgency of its message. However, II keep circling back to a tension in the argument.

I work in brand strategy. If there’s one thing that job teaches me, it’s that nuance isn’t a luxury ... it’s the work! Vision statements, brand values, tone of voice - none of these are born from binary thinking. They’re built through friction: competing perspectives, internal politics, endless workshops, and yes: cognitive differences. You have to understand these nuances. Yet you have to reduce the complexity to make the strategy work. And the best strategies don’t flatten complexity - they translate it. They make it usable, actionable. They orchestrate tension into something that resonates.

So if I apply your core thesis wholesale to human behavior in collaborative or creative environments - I’m not sure it holds. Nuance isn’t punished there. It’s essential. But then again … building a brand isn’t as existential as politics.

For context: I’m based in Germany, so my view on U.S. politics is obviously from the outside. Still, your essay got me thinking about our own landscape. We’ve got a multi-party system that’s more fragmented (or more nuanced) than ever. The formerly pacifist Green Party pushes for defense budgets. The far left flirts with right-wing rhetoric. The Christian Democrats are now the centrist "firewall". Everyone shifts, softens, repositions. The result? Voters aren’t more informed. They’re more confused. Not because complexity is hard - but because no one’s willing to commit to a simple, coherent idea. Or actionable solutions to complex problems.

So yes nuance is good. But only if it leads somewhere.

When everyone tries to stand for everything, they end up standing for nothing. That’s not thoughtful complexity. That’s strategic ambiguity. And people feel it.

So maybe the real challenge isn’t how to defend nuance - but how to give it structure. How to make it land. If it really is a marker of empathy and intelligence (and I agree it is), how do we translate that into something “normal people” can actually act on? Not just in ideas, but in everyday choices?

At the end of the day: Nuance that doesn’t lead to clarity isn’t resistance. It’s more noise.

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