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We suck at talking politics. Everyone knows this. But why? Do we avoid talking politics because we’re bad at it, or are we bad at it because we avoid it? For the last three years, I’ve been writing a book in an attempt to find the answers to these questions.
Though I was raised Conservative, I would describe myself as politically agnostic for the first twenty years of my life. In high school, I would sometimes argue the Conservative perspective, but that was just because I liked to debate and because I knew it got under my openly Liberal history teacher’s skin. This continued in college, at least initially. I soon realized that I had never learned how to think for myself. I never thought about what I believed, let alone why. The second question proved much harder to answer.
I spent my time as an undergrad in the (very) Liberal town of Ithaca, NY. During this time, I learned how to speak and act like a Liberal. The more I understood about the Left, the less I understood about the Right. Naturally, this resulted in increasingly worse conversations when I came home for the holidays. Christmas dinner looked like the set of “The Five” on FOX News: a bunch of Conservatives and one token Liberal.
Many of our disagreements spilled over into email and Facebook. I still remember the chaos that ensued when I posted a picture of myself at a Bernie Sanders rally. My comments section was a mixture of approval from fellow Millennials and outrage from those who took my attendance as proof of my full-on endorsement of socialism—and betrayal of my roots. While I found it (slightly) easier to keep my cool during online exchanges, these conversations ultimately shared the same fate as those I had in person.
In the several years that followed, I toggled back and forth between two “strategies:” not engaging or engaging poorly. I think that my experience represents the political matrix in which many of us find ourselves trapped. Firing off snarky responses from the safety of my keyboard was admittedly better for my blood pressure (and my ego), but it wasn’t an actual solution. It’s also not practical. The real test is being able to keep your wits about you when it’s most difficult: in real-time, and in person. For years, this was about as likely as me explaining the plot of Game of Thrones to a toddler. Then I discovered something that forever changed the way that I thought about politics.
This blog represents my ongoing journey to have a political conversation that doesn’t end with someone (me) shouting and/or crying. If you’ve already taken the red or blue pill, this may not be for you. If you want to escape the matrix—if you’re curious what we’re really talking about when we talk about politics—read on.
