We’re now more than a month into a new presidency in America, and it’s been not only a “polarizing” start, but one of the most divisive elections in history. Regardless of which side we’re all on, a lot of us have one thing in common:
We’ve all been posting an awful lot of rants.
Yup, using social media as our own personal 1000-watt bullhorn. Volume cranked to 11.
But maybe it’s time we find another method of communicating:
A good old walkie-talkie.
Because both bullhorns and walkie-talkies allow us to project a message across a distance. But only one allows for the other side to respond. Now, I’m not actually suggesting we all buy walkie-talkies. I’m just suggesting we all get more in the habit of two-way conversations: one person speaks, waits for a reply from the other side, thinks about it, then formulates a thoughtful counter-reply.
Back and forth. Call and response. Not one-way.
This all occurred to me one night after seeing a post from my friend and meditation teacher, James Brown (no, not the late soul singer, this James Brown). He posted a pic of a walkie-talkie in its base station without its partner, and commented, “There's nothing more useless than a single walkie-talkie.” Which is essentially what any of us is doing when we get on social media and blast our complaints into the void. Sure, others can “comment” back, but are we really listening? Between liberals blatantly dismissing conservatives as ‘suckers’ and conservatives dismissing liberals as ‘trapped in an elitist bubble,’ few of us are changing anyone’s mind.
To demonstrate the futility of our prevalent “bullhorn mentality,” I’ll use myself as an example. I share what I almost Tweeted on election night, my bullhorn firmly in hand. Full disclosure: I was a Hillary supporter who, while having problems with Hillary, just had way, way more problems with Trump. Now, I want this to be a pro-communication piece, and not an anti-Trump piece, but suffice it to say, I was really worried about the outcome and what I thought it could mean for America. And here’s what I almost Tweeted:
(But again, to be clear: I no longer believe what is written below, and I’m glad I didn’t post it.)
So, again, here’s my I-no-longer-believe-this statement to illustrate my point:
“America was murdered tonight. And white men, not minorities, pulled the trigger.”
Now, I now think that phrase is untrue for a number of reasons, which I’ll explain. But the larger point is: I somehow sensed I didn’t know the whole situation yet, and might be glad if I waited a bit before registering my verdict. More importantly, I don’t think it would have really improved anything, other than made me feel powerful for a few seconds. The feeling of a loud-mouthed social media bullhorn rant affords us a cheap high, but it rarely advances our lives forward.
So I did something different. I put down my bullhorn for a sec. And I started doing something else. Listening more. Researching more. Asking questions more. And finding out a few simple things that made me disagree with that:
1) It turns out it wasn’t just white males voting for Trump, but a huge number of white females, too. And more minorities than any of we liberals saw coming. So we were missing something.
2) Ultimately, one elected official does not America make. In Obama’s farewell letter, he reminded us, “And when the arc of progress seems slow, remember: America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word 'We.'” Even if I think one elected official might lack the character and wisdom I think defines the USA, there’s still 300 million more of us who get to make sure the best of America is alive and kicking.
3) I wrongly believed that a Trump victory meant American values like honesty, decency, humility, respect, courtesy, tolerance, acceptance of minorities, and respect for science and fact were dead. They live on in plenty of America. And even if I didn’t feel I saw them embraced by the president-elect, the vast majority of America didn’t vote for him (100 million didn’t vote at all, unfortunately), so Trump doesn’t represent that much of America after all--only 19% of the est. US population of 326 million.
Perhaps most of all, posting that would have driven even more of a divide between me and my conservative friends who think I’m just being overly dramatic and blowing things out proportion. The chance for calm conversation would be gone before it had a chance to start.
But I learned a few more things since, then, and they were only possible by me doing something I don’t normally do: calmly engage those of opposing minds to mine what their reasons were in supporting Trump (some of whom are in my extended family). Such as:
Many Trump supporters have tons of problems with him. They loathe many things about him and aren’t “clueless” as many liberals believe. They, too, often think Trump is offensive, or a “PR nightmare,” as one friend said. They just believe in spite of those things, he’ll bring jobs back and be good for the economy, or bring about another good. (Whether or not that happens, their vote was a conflicted one, not one of blind faith, which liberals perhaps wrongly believe.)
But additionally in those talks, they pointed out aspects of how America and 8 years of Obama wasn’t “working” for them as well as I’d believed, and I was able to bring up issues with Trump that they weren’t as aware of, which deepened their understanding of why liberals like me are so critical of him.
In the end, we both walked away with a deeper understanding of the other’s views. Have we swapped our views as a result? No. But we’re both more respectful of the other POV. And that could be helpful down the road. Because as this presidency wears on, we all might be benefit a lot more the walkie talkie approach than by getting on our bullhorns--especially if Trump voters don’t end up as happy with this presidency as they hoped and are looking for an alternative.
Let’s use the lead-up to the election as a great example of how not enough of us were using walkie-talkies.
The liberals were yelling on their bullhorns, “You can’t vote for Trump, he’s a misogynist, a bigot, a sexist, dishonest, manipulative, and too politically inexperienced. End of story.”
And the conservatives were yelling, “You can’t possibly vote for Hillary, she’s in the pockets of the banks, she hid emails, she stole the primaries from Bernie, and she let Americans die in Benghazi. End of story.”
But both of us were yelling so loudly, and in such black and white terms, that there was no room for either side to concede a point or welcome a dialog.
Liberals wrongly assumed we outnumbered Trump voters and Hillary would win.
Trump supporters assumed only Hillary was corrupt, and Trump would ‘drain the swamp,’ and yet the swamp appears to be alive and well in Trump’s cabinet choices and possible Russian connections. Republicans are about as unhappy with their “republican” victor as any in history.
Meanwhile, 100 million eligible voters were so non-plussed by either option, they decided not to vote at all.
And we all paid a price.
Hell, if liberals had been listening better, we might have provided another alternative for frustrated Americans turned Trump supporters, perhaps one like Bernie Sanders. Or maybe someone else entirely. But someone that would answer more people’s frustrations than Hillary did.
And maybe if Trump supporters been listening to liberals more, they would have conceded Trump has more problems than they wanted to admit.
So, in the spirit of Stephen Covey’s message, ”Seek first to understand, then to be understood,” here’s hoping we all spend a little more time engaging in two-way conversation over the next four years, and a little less time on our oh-so-convenient social media bullhorns. The future of America depends on it.