As Thanksgiving approaches, Americans across the nation are gearing up for football, food and time with friends and family. Most years, but especially on election years, I’ve crossed my fingers and hoped that politics will not be brought up in conversation and inevitably taint the holiday with division and awkward tension between relatives. If you’re anything like me, you would rather be tasked with defeathering a live turkey while blindfolded than be subjected to sitting in between two family members engaged in a torrid argument at a dinner table.
“Please, for the love of God,” I think to myself as my uncle starts to talk. “Don’t bring up Donald Trump.”
Yet, after spending the last few months watching friends and family craft scathing, political diatribes against each other on the internet — I’ve gained a new perspective: maybe we should bring politics to the dinner table.
We’re living through an incredibly tense time in history where we feel more comfortable blocking and mocking those with different beliefs than ours rather than attempting to both articulate our own views and engage in active listening to alternative ones. There are more than two fundamental belief systems. Under our two-party system, the nation’s array of political beliefs has been successfully tribalized into two distinct camps.
Political views can and should shift throughout any person’s life based on the introduction of new knowledge and experiences. Most Americans do not align 100% with one candidate’s views — this nuance deserves to be discussed in respectful ways.
Our country will continue to become more divided if we cannot even break bread with people who we share blood with. Having civil disagreements and conversations about the future of the country is a vital part of democracy.
There needs to be an attempt to find common ground amongst fellow Americans if we are to return to normalcy.
When the Pew Research Center asked Americans to describe politics in a single word, 79% responded with negative sentiments, and the most frequent response, at a whopping 8%, was “divisive.” 65% of respondents also report feeling “exhausted” when they think about politics. An overwhelming majority, 84%, say political debate has become less respectful.
These feelings and sentiments supersede geographic location, political affiliations and other demographics — most Americans are unhappy with the devolving nature of politics and political discourse. Avoiding conflict only allows resentment and misunderstanding to flourish.
“A lot of people anticipate that talking about how they feel is going to be a confrontation,” psychologist Jennice Vilhauer told the New York Times. “That mental expectation makes people want to avoid things that make them uncomfortable.”
New American Psychiatric Association polling says that about one-third of Americans expect to have a heated political discussion with family members post-election. With one in five (22%) saying that conversations around controversial topics made them anxious, more (27%) said they enjoyed hearing different points of view.
In my personal experience, I have been able to find commonality and openness amongst most friends and family members in my life that I’ve engaged in political conversations with. Whether or not we agree on every issue, I’ve left the conversation considering a different perspective of the issue or a new argument against my own that I had to consider and defend. To have these conversations, you don’t need to have similar views — just a willingness to listen to someone else.
Admittedly, I understand not every single family is able to have respectful conversations, and it may simply not be worth damaging your mental well-being by engaging with an explosively emotional relative; so maybe the conversation isn’t with –that– particular relative or even at the Thanksgiving table at all. Maybe it’s at a coffee shop with a friend or during a lunch with a coworker, but I believe these are conversations worth attempting to have.
It’s easy to identify differences amongst the “other.” It’s more important to find commonality amongst fellow Americans and start viewing one another with respect and empathy — this starts with communicating.
I maintain a persistent belief that most Americans truly want what is best for the nation; even if we’re divided on what exactly that is right now.
