In the 1950s the psychologist Gordon Allport proposed “contact theory.”71 Inaccurate version: if you bring Us-es and Thems together (say, teenagers from two hostile nations brought together in a summer camp), animosities disappear, similarities become more important than differences, and everyone becomes an Us. More accurate version: put Us-es and Thems together under very narrow circumstances and something sort of resembling that happens, but you can also blow it and worsen things.
