Simple talk

A fierce liberal activist led an anti-Trump march a few weeks ago. A pro-Trump group formed and started heckling them. He went over to the ringleader and said, “Let’s talk.” The man said, “I don’t want to talk to you”; but he was convinced by a younger member of his group to at least try.

So the two had a conversation. The anti-Trump guy started by looking for things they could agree on, and they found a few common points. But they disagreed a lot, and they argued for seven or eight minutes. They certainly didn’t resolve their differences.  At the end, the Trump supporter said, “I can’t vote the way you vote.”

But then he added something important:

“See, you’re normal. A lot of people, they don’t want to talk, they just want to impress, they’re haters now.”

“You’re normal.” Everything starts with that. If we see each other as normal, we can reduce the polarization that drives denialism and extremism. People take Limbaugh and Fox as gospel only because they see how strongly the “haters” oppose them; it’s a self-reinforcing cycle, and we liberals are playing into it by yelling and screaming. Many on the right would be less stuck if they knew it wasn’t just the haters -- that other “normal” people also see things differently. And then – only then – we will have a chance to unfreeze the positions, to look at facts together, to make some progress.

What impresses me about this conversation – here’s a spontaneous video of it – is how simple it was. There were no clever dialogic strategies or debating tricks, no facilitators. There was only a willingness to try. We can all do that.