Family Gatherings
When I was a kid, I loved holiday gatherings. My mom and dad were each one of five siblings, and once you added in all the spouses and children and guests and roommates and visiting foreign exchange students and grandparents …well … both sides of my family could throw a pretty big fiesta.
I liked hanging with my cousins. Sometimes there’d be party games. Somebody had always gone on an exotic adventure and had pictures and stories to share. My grandma made a killer mac n’ cheese, and dessert was always good. At Christmas, of course, there were always presents. But my favorite thing about the holidays, more than any of that, was watching the grown-ups argue about politics … something that the two sides of my family did very, very differently.
The Lords
My dad’s family, the Lords, convened in an old house on a shady boulevard in West Hartford, Connecticut. They had a pedigree that stretched back into the 1500s. The Lords were some of the founders of the Connecticut colony back in 1636. And the Lords … they could never agree on anything, not even the events of their collective childhoods. According to at least a few of them, my Grandpa Lord, the family’s patriarch, used to divide the dinner table into teams, choose a topic for debate, and make his children argue it out. If you believe my dad’s account, which of course no one ever does, whoever lost had to do the dishes. Considering my grandfather’s personality, and the overall temperament of the family, I, for one, find this story eminently believable.
From my seat at the kids’ table, the Lords’ political debate looked like a game. It was about rhetoric and wit. And it was highly competitive. But it was also … how should I say … removed. The things that people talked about: foreign policy, wars, hostages, immigration–all of it seemed very far away from the cozy dining room with the oriental rug and the china cabinet. In the Lord house, convictions were voiced with bravado. Occasionally, people would “switch sides” and start arguing against the point that they had JUST MADE if the opposing team’s bench wasn’t deep enough. Statistics were made up out of hand, and when they were occasionally exposed as falsehoods or mistakes, the perpetrator often just shrugged and made a joke by way of excuse. Hyperbole was just part of the game. And a rhetorical foul might be as intentional and as tactical in debate as an athlete grabbing the shirt of an opponent who’s got a straight shot at an open goal. At least, that’s how I remember it.
The Riels
My mom’s family was an altogether different story. The Riels, spelled R-I-E-L, were French-Canadian Catholics. Most branches of their family tree disappear into obscurity in just two or three generations, often about the time when our ancestors slipped over the border from Quebec looking for jobs. The Riels were laborers and firemen. My grandfather was the school janitor. My mother was the first member of the family to go to college. Gram Riel lived in a stuffy little condo just outside of Worcester, Massachusetts, where some of our ancestors had worked the fabric mills during the early 20th century.
If the Lords were loud (and my wife insists that they were), the Riels were louder. Sometimes their laughter was so loud that we couldn’t even get the family’s attention to start distributing the Christmas gifts. And while the Lords came to political debates as a cerebral game of strategy, the Riels came at it entirely from their heart. Their disagreements were more heated. To me, as an 11 year old kid sitting on the sidelines and sipping a ginger ale, they didn’t look like a game of verbal chess. It was about real hopes and frustrations, dreams and fears. Where the Lords would talk in principles and abstractions, the Riels would talk in stories. Politics was concrete and personal. And while the Lords debated from a place of rarified remove, the Riel’s would debate with passion, with loud voices and waving arms.
My Experience
But for all their differences, both the Lords and the Riels were awesome to watch. They felt passionately. They argued with such confidence. They were funny and clever and convincing … and they were smart. Oh, they were smart! They knew so much about the world and how it worked.
No matter which house I was in … Lords or Riels … my routine was the same. I would fill a plate with snacks, ignore the admonitions to not spoil my dinner, and wander through the crowded house until I found a gaggle of grown-ups who looked like they were having a serious conversation. Then, I would plop myself down nearby and listen. Until I was well into my teens, I rarely contributed to a debate. I mean, what did I know? What would I even say? And as the shuttle of the conversation sailed back and forth, so would my opinion. Someone would say something, and I would be like, ” Yes, yes that’s right.” But then someone else would chime in with a counterpoint, and I would stop, and reconsider. “No, wait, that makes sense, that must be right.”
What I Learned
History Lessons
Looking back on all of this now as an adult. I am struck by just how much I learned. I may not have mustered up on one side or another, I wasn’t a passive observer either. I asked lots of questions. Lots of questions. And the grown-ups in both families would always pause to answer. They would explain the turbulent history of Israel and Palestine, the decades-long argument over the 2nd amendment, the proxy conflicts of the Cold War, how oil influenced global politics, and what the hell social security was. I learned about history and government and culture and law. And all of it was with a candor and drama that I never got in school.
Asking Big Questions
The questions I asked tended to be the practical, clarifying kind. And their answers were usually matters of fact about which even the debaters agreed. But the things that I learned the most about weren’t so easy to pin down. They were often about what wasn’t said … unstated things hanging in the air. They were the questions at the heart of politics itself. What is fair? When does one person’s right supersede someone else’s? Who should have power and how much? What freedoms matter? What do we owe each other?
At 11 and 12, the answers to questions like this seemed straightforward to me. Our country was free. Things were either fair or they weren’t. Actions were good or bad. But holiday after holiday, discussion after discussion, my simple thinking was gently wallumped.
When I stated once, with naive conviction, that all corporations were evil, someone pointed out that incorporation was one of the few ways a kayaking guide, for example, might protect herself when her clients took stupid risks, hurt themselves, and slammed her with a life-altering lawsuit. A corporation, they explained was a setup so that if anyone sued, they would sue her business instead of her. Was that evil?
When I said that communists were bad, someone else would explain how, whether it worked in practice or not, people often joined communist parties out of desperation … how often these people had toiled in dangerous and unhealthy conditions and a life of inescapable poverty while the owners of land and mines and factories grew rich on their backs. What if the workers owned the factories? Suddenly the idea didn’t seem so bad.
At every turn, my world got a little bigger, a little more complicated, a little more interesting. I got to see both sides of many an argument, or as was often the case, three or four sides. I learned that my first thoughts weren’t always my best ones. I learned about the importance of listening. I learned about hard choices and how sometimes there were no right answers at all.
Learning How to Disagree
These were less explicit lessons than the ones about history and civics. But beneath those, there was a deeper lesson still–not one about what they argued about, but about how people argued. However heated the discussion and however long it lasted, the evenings always ended in hugs all around, self-deprecating jokes, and a genuine all-around conviction that we had to get together more often. Both families were buoyed up by mutual affection. After an intractable disagreement, brothers would go play touch football in the backyard. After a red-faced exchange, someone would make a joke and everyone would laugh and laugh and laugh. (For the record, my families are still very loud and still very good at laughing.)
As different as my two families were, they were alike in this. No matter how much they argued and disagreed, they always ended the day with respect and love. They knew each other’s trials and triumphs. They knew each other’s disappointments and hopes. And at the end of every argument, what mattered more than ideas or policies or philosophies … was each other.
There are good reasons not to talk politics.
As a kid, and even as a teenager, none of this seemed unusual. It was just the way life was. But since then, I’ve met lots of other families where the discussions that happened at our Thanksgiving would have ended in disaster. For lots of people, debating politics with family is lumped in with dental work and tax returns … something necessary and unpleasant to be endured. Sometimes getting through the holidays is hard enough without having to listen to Uncle Archie spout off about some half-baked bigoted idea.
Talking politics in any kind of civil and constructive way seems harder now than it’s ever been in my lifetime. A 2021 Pew Research poll shows that over the previous five years Americans had increasingly found political conversations with people they disagree with to be “stressful and frustrating.” Another Pew poll in 2020 reported that almost half of American respondents had basically closed the door on talking politics with someone because of something that they’d said. The internet is aflame with our proclamations of righteous outrage, but sit us down face-to-face with someone outside of our ideological bubble and, on average, we’d rather just talk about the weather.
Honestly, it’s true for me, too. These days, when I find myself talking to someone on the other side of a political gulf, I think of lots of reasons NOT to engage
We Almost Never Convince our Opponents
I tell myself that it’s pointless. This person has clearly already made up their mind. Saying something will only alienate us. And I have science to back me up. Thousands of experiments have shown that even when faced with comprehensive evidence against their position, we humans just don’t change our minds. In fact , it’s worse. Most often, seeing contrary evidence causes us to double down. As Elizabeth Kolbert, writing for a 2017 article in the New Yorker quipped, “Any graduate student with a clipboard can demonstrate that reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational.” So why bother?
Innocent Bystanders
But it’s not just always about me saving my breath. Sometimes it’s also about innocent bystanders. What if the people at my table don’t want to sit through an ad hoc debate on immigration? Or what about the gracious hosts of whatever gathering I might be at … people who have worked hard to ensure that everyone is having a good time? If all they really wanted was to see the nieces and nephews and enjoy some good cookies … would it be fair to detonate the politics bomb at their party?
Cuts Right to the Heart
But the biggest reason, really, is just that I don’t like it when other people get angry at me. And people do get really really angry about politics. And it’s no wonder that we do. Politics is largely about how we treat other people, how we treat the planet we live on, and who should get to decide. And these things matter–not just abstractly, but personally. Sometimes they are matters of life and death. It’s no wonder that people often get angry. That happens when survival is at stake.
But Talking Politics is Important
So … yeah … with all of those reasons to avoid talking about politics, why … why do it at all? Why not just stay where it’s comfortable … griping about the state of things with people we know we agree with, while studiously avoiding the subject with people we don’t know? Well, I, for one, think there is one good reason to do so. As nerve-wracking and uncomfortable as it can be … talking politics is fundamental to our democracies.
Democracy is learned. And talking politics is how we learn it. The United States may not be the most democratic democracy. But it is one of the most enduring. How has it lasted so long? How did it get off the ground when so many other revolutions collapsed into despotism or chaos? There were lots of factors, of course, but here’s one important one: From the Iroquois confederacy to the New England town meeting, Americans practiced democracy long before any tea was thrown into Boston Harbor. For generations, neighbors had gathered to sit face to face to set their own taxes, fund their schools, and decide whether the meeting house should get a new roof. So, when a national government emerged, people knew what to do with it. If our democracy has lasted, maybe it is because of the practice with political talk that we have had.
And while it may be true that political arguments tend not to change the thinking of their debaters, the debaters are not the only people involved. What of the ones listening from the sidelines? Kids like me, sitting at my uncles’ feet? Even if my uncles didn’t change each other’s minds, my mind changed. I was able to step outside my thinking for a bit, and empathize with multiple points of view. Arguments DO change minds, just not always the minds we expect.
But talking politics is not just how we learn democracy or teach it to the next generation. A democracy is just a group of people who have agreed to muddle through big questions about rights and justice and survival together? When it comes down to it, talking politics is what democracy IS. And if we stop talking, democracy stops too.
In the United States, it is easy to see … and to blame … the infighting, the brinkmanship, and the rancor that have immobilized our republic. But keeping democracy going is not just about not shouting at each other. Just as pernicious are the millions of little silences. The little choices people make not to engage in good faith with people on the other side. It is easy to forget that if we don’t say something, we are still saying something. Silence sends a clear message to our fellow citizens, to our leaders, and to our children. And one of the messages it sends is, “It’s okay to pretend everything is fine, even in the face of injustice.” It says that short-term tranquility is more important than engaging with the problems that beset us.
If American democracy is to continue, it will be because its people will have the courage both to listen deeply and to speak clearly with people outside of their bubble. It will be because we talk to each other.
A Way Forward
Political talk, even with people we profoundly disagree with, doesn’t always have to be adversarial squabbling. Rancor and silence are not our only choices. There are other ways.
But how? HOW? How do we keep it from going there when our divisions are so deep. And our anger is so great.
I have an answer, I think. An answer that I learned from some of my difficult conversation heroes. People who deftly showed me how we can talk to each other, even when the topics are contentious. People who demonstrated that our fellow human beings can and do listen and think and consider new ideas. Those people, those heroes, were my high school students.
My Students
I was a high school teacher for a long time. I taught science, not politics, but don’t be fooled by the lab coats. Disagreement in science can be just as heated even if it’s not about evolution or vaccines or climate science. Argument, after all, is built in. It is science’s tempering fire. Peer critique is designed to mercilessly burn away our most cherished and beautiful ideas. Anything that doesn’t match the evidence is eventually reduced to ash.
As a newly-minted science teacher, fresh out of graduate school, I dreamed of teaching in a way that would give my students a taste of the majesty and power of this process.
There was only one problem … I was terrible at it. Several years into my career, I was wondering if this approach was even possible.
Then, after about 8 years of teaching, I entered a program where science teachers like me learned about the new Next Generation Science Standards. It was a remarkable program. I learned all kinds of things that, I can say without hyperbole, changed my teaching life. One of the most powerful elements of that program wasn’t based on education research or science teaching methods. It was based on research by linguists–people who had watched hours and hours of student discussions trying to figure out what made classroom discussions productive.
What emerged, and what I found so valuable was a way of thinking about discussion. And like so many good ideas, it seemed obvious in hindsight. Like, why hadn’t I thought of it before? Put simply, productive discussion requires four things. 1.) Someone had to talk. 2.) Someone had to listen. 3.) People needed to explain their reasons. And 4.) they needed to respond to the reasons of others. If discussion wasn’t productive, it usually meant that there was a breakdown in one of these four areas.
In that program I also learned of a whole battery of tools that I could use to help people to meet these four goals. Most of them were pretty simple. They were things like: ask a student to say more about their idea and to do so with genuine curiosity–to show with your face and your body that, wrong or right, their idea matters. Or to regularly ask students to say back to each other what someone else had said. To communicate that, in this classroom, we listen to each other.
When I got back to my classroom, I set the stage for this new approach with daily reminders of some basic agreements.
- that ideas are useful even when they don’t turn out to be right,
- that disagreement is not a sign of a problem, that it is natural, indeed that it is a sign that we’re learning,
- that the world is a surprising place and all of us might be wrong about what we think, and
- that changing our ideas is not a sign of weakness or lack of conviction; it is the sign of a flexible and open mind.
These supports didn’t make our classroom conversations easy. They still demanded bravery and compassion and comfort with uncertainty. But they did, for the first time in my career, make those kinds of discussions possible. And I cannot tell you how amazing my students were. Semester after semester, they stepped up. Every day, they impressed and humbled and inspired me with their courage. I will be indebted to the students who taught me this for the rest of my life.
It wasn’t until the tumultuous American election of 2016 that I realized that political discussions were not so different from the kinds of discussions we were having in science. In politics the stakes might be more charged, the topics more emotional, but the bottom lines are the same. We need to talk, to listen, to reason, and reason with each other. And the tools that can help us get there are often simple. Any of us can use them. All we need to do is take a mental step back. “Tell me more about that …” “So what you’re trying to say is …”
Other Examples
Then, once I thought about it, I could see that people all over the world had already been applying these same tools. Bishop Desmond Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commision … where deep listening offered South Africa a way to move beyond apartheid’s brutal cycles of retribution and violence. In 1971, a skillfully guided political conversation led by Bill Ridick led to the desegregation of schools in Durham, NC and the lifelong friendship between a former KKK leader and the black activist who had started the conversation as enemies. The Good Friday agreements that led to the end of the Troubles in Northern Ireland were based on the aired grievances and aspirations of nationalists and unionists alike.
None of these processes were perfect. But they all turned the tides of real and seemingly intractable conflicts. And all of them happened because people found the courage to talk, the humility to listen, and the forgiveness required to forge some common ground.
There is one more thing I want to say about the potential of political talk. It’s something I think we often forget … even when we acknowledge that it’s important. I think we forget that … it can be fun! Politics is work. Anyone who has sat through a zoning board meeting can tell you that. But it is not just work. Talking politics can inspire us to our highest ideals. It can be thrilling to ask the biggest questions about the world. To dare to imagine how to build a better future. The political world is as full of mystery and discovery as any great human endeavor, and can give us that same pleasant tingle that comes whenever we learn something new.
Conclusion: We have so much to be thankful for.
On September 18, 1787, the final day of the convention that resulted in the Constitution of the United States, the Philadelphia matriarch, Elizabeth Powel, asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government the convention’s four months of negotiations had finally resulted in. His legendary answer feels as pertinent today as it must have on that September morning. “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.” When I was young, I found these words inspiring. These days, when I hear them, I am troubled.
I know that deep and honest listening can be transformative. I know all of these examples of when it made the difference between democracy and despotism, between justice and inequity. And I cannot let go of this abiding dream that one day respectful disagreement as a mutual quest for truth will be seen as the foundation of human governance. But even with all that, I am still and genuinely afraid. I often despair that reason and tolerance will get sucked into the social media vortex and repackaged for the outrage machine. I worry that it’s too late … that me and my fellow citizens are not wise enough or interested enough to keep the republic that we have.
I wish I could tell you that deep listening and honest engagement with your conspiracy-peddling cousin will ensure a brighter future. But I can’t. I can’t even tell you that it will give him a leg up out of the rabbit hole. I have no idea what hope the future holds.
But maybe hope is not what we need. The peace activist and Buddhist monk wrote, “If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today. But that is the most that hope can do for us – to make some hardship lighter. When I think deeply about the nature of hope, I see something tragic. Since we cling to our hope in the future, we do not focus our energies and capabilities on the present moment. We use hope to believe something better will happen in the future, that we will arrive at peace, or the Kingdom of God. Hope becomes a kind of obstacle. If you can refrain from hoping, you can bring yourself entirely into the present moment and discover the joy that is already here.”
So let me … let us … refrain for a moment from hoping. Instead, let me focus on the work and the joy that is already here. Because, even now, in this strained political moment, there are reasons to be grateful. Here are five.
First, is this. Many of us can talk about politics. Many of us can even do it in cafes and on the streets without hushing our voices. We can even proclaim our ideas in the public square without fear of a midnight knock on our door. Without fear that we will be disappeared or sent to a concentration camp or a gulag. Have we forgotten how this dignity was won. Our forebears bought us this inheritance … often with their lives. And for those of us who do have it, it behooves us to remember our many brothers and sisters around the world do not.
This, of course, is not a perfect liberty, even in countries that pride themselves on being free. And this brings me to my second gratitude. Despite the challenges … despite the attempt by powerful people to silence, to placate, and to discourage them … people are still talking. Even now, with politics so uncomfortably hot, those conversations still happen. There are still people, even people in government, who have not forgotten how to listen. Our democracies, as flawed and strained as they are, are still there. That is not nothing! And even in their current state, they are worth being grateful for. Look at them. Look how far we’ve come from when it seemed there was no escape from the divine right of kings. Look at how many things we have agreed on. Look at all the mistakes we made. And look at how we’ve even learned from some of them. Even in our flawed and broken systems, there are parts that work.
Third, I am grateful for my heroes–those political figures that have inspired me with their integrity and generosity and their hope. These are the people that do the sometimes dangerous and oftentime boring work of keeping us free.The ones who have risked despots and hatred, the ones who have faced down power, The ones who somehow safeguard their humility and compassion in a world of lobbyists and back-room deals.
But my heroes aren’t the only ones worthy of my thanks. I also owe them to the people with whom I disagree. My fourth gratitude goes out to them. I need people from outside of my political bubble. I need them to see my biases. Bias isn’t a character flaw. It’s not intentional. It’s not a willful refusal to acknowledge the truth. It’s just how we are built. Bias is when we deceive OURSELVES. And we all do it. And there are precious few protections against it. Outside of science and mathematics, there’s really only one good defense–to share your ideas and to let someone else try to tear them apart. People who disagree with me make me smarter and clearer than I ever could be without them. We all talk bullshit sometimes. And when we do, we need someone to reign us in and remind us to be humble. And if we are lucky, as I have often been, sometimes we find people who do that with empathy and generosity and respect.
Fifth and finally, I am so grateful to my family and what they taught me over the holiday hors d’oeuvres. It could have been different. They could have stopped when I came into the room with whispers to “Cool it down in front of the kids.” They could have shooed me away or told me to go play in the basement or send me back to the kids table. But they didn’t. They let me listen. They answered my questions. When I made occasional points, and I’m sure they were clumsy ones, they treated them with respect. Nor did they just agree with me or nod along because I was a kid. They did me the dignity of disagreeing with me just as vociferously as anyone else. Which meant that when I finally said something that people found funny or poignant, I was filled with a sense of well-earned pride. In every case I was treated like a person who could make up his own mind about things. They taught me that kindness and confidence were not mutually exclusive. I know that respectful and constructive disagreement is possible because I saw it. I watched it happen every year.
We can all be these kinds of mentors to the next generation. We can show them how to listen and how to speak their truth. No matter where you live or what happens in the next election, we can show our children that we can move forward together … even with playful curiosity … as we chart a course for ourselves and our descendants … into a mysterious and wonderful Universe that none of us will be in long enough to understand.
References
Green, T. V. (2021, November 23). Republicans and Democrats alike say it’s stressful to talk politics with people who disagree. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/23/republicans-and-democrats-alike-say-its-stressful-to-talk-politics-with-people-who-disagree/
Josh, L. (2022, January 6). “A republic if you can keep it”: Elizabeth Willing Powel, Benjamin Franklin, and the James McHenry Journal | Unfolding History: Manuscripts at the Library of Congress. Blogs.loc.gov. https://blogs.loc.gov/manuscripts/2022/01/a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it-elizabeth-willing-powel-benjamin-franklin-and-the-james-mchenry-journal/
Jurkowitz, M., & Mitchell, A. (2020, February 5). Almost half of Americans have stopped talking politics with someone. Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project. https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2020/02/05/a-sore-subject-almost-half-of-americans-have-stopped-talking-politics-with-someone/
Kolbert, E. (2017, February 19). Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds
Thich Nhat Hanh. (1991). Peace Is Every Step. Toronto Bantam Books.