Great Scott

For some people in my life, there is no longer a space for persuasion. The voices that fill their heads have constructed a new reality which runs parallel to the real timeline. Dr. Emmett Brown explained this effectively in the image below.

I was raised in a milieu of conservative talk radio, 2000s-era Fox News, and a chorus of men (and they were almost exclusively men) who would explain "how things are" with folded arms and tut-tutting at the dangerous "liberals" who dared offer opposing perspectives. When you haven't heard any differently, why would you question this thinking?

I went to a conservative university (it is, despite some detractors who assert it is otherwise), where I began to grapple with questions such as my church's explicit support for California's Prop 8 to abolish same-sex marriage (even then I questioned whether it was the state's proper role to mandate how people should act) and whether the GOP would accept Mitt Romney as a presidential nominee (even now I had to look up and remember that he did indeed run in 2008). I immersed myself in a collection of blogs on Townhall.org, hoping that there I would find the intellectual fortitude that would backstop the beliefs that I had inherited.

I graduated. I left Provo, Utah and entered the lone and dreary world of Houston, TX. I met far more diverse characters there than I ever could have encountered in Utah County. I wanted to understand how people thought, why things were the way they were. I listened to local public radio. I read the books I had heard of at my university, but never had opportunity to as part of my curriculum. I spoke with coworkers. I learned that the world was more interesting and nuanced than what I had been led to believe. I don't think Alison and I would have worked out if I hadn't tamped down my natal politics (and abandon my designs on purchasing a handgun).

Yet I still held that strong national defense and responsible fiscal policy were important to national politics, and I didn't believe I was getting that from Barack Obama. I already had wished for Romney's success in his previous run, so of course I was going to support him again in 2012. The nomination battle was the ugliest stretch of politicking I'd seen to that point. The anti-Mormon bigotry was to be expected, although sorely disappointing. But there was abject stupidity (oops, Rick Perry) and sadism (let the uninsured die!) that I just couldn't tolerate. The seeds of doubt were laid in the Republican primary campaign of 2012, that blossomed into unadulterated loathing of the man who became the standard-bearer of the party in 2016.

And here we are again in 2024, like the world's stupidest game of Wheel of Fortune, landing on the peg straddling "Moral Bankruptcy" and "maybe things stay the same or get better slightly." And it's a coin-flip which side we're ultimately going to land. The Republican nominee for president advocates tariffs on foreign goods, withdrawing from NATO, and blaming Zelenskyy for the war in Ukraine (a topic which I can barely find the spiritual energy to speak about due to my outright depression at the significant anti-Ukrainian sentiment on the US right). The Democratic nominee for president advocates incentives for first-time homebuyers, a commitment to NATO, and supporting Ukraine in its struggle against invading Russian forces. Maybe it's a weird collection of issues, but these matter the most to me. Oh, and I guess I kind of a have a problem with the Republican nominee's loose grasp on how elections work.

All of this is just to describe the years-long process that I have followed and my relation to reality. I found that it is frighteningly easy to lose touch and burrow into a rabbit-hole of sclerotic ideology, repeating the same arguments over to like-minded people who nod along and reinforce your views. I'm not perfect by any means, but having been on "both sides of the fence," so to speak, I feel like my experience can be instructive.

What follows are a collection of quotes that touch on various aspects of our collective grasp of the world in which we live and our relationship to one another. Marty McFly found a way to collapse the timelines between 1985a and 1985b, but he had a time machine. All I have are my words...

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'...Now we have a new slogan on the part of the obscurantists: 'Don't trust the experts!'"

-Isaac Asimov (1980)

"This has to stop. We're not going to stop by listening to experts. We're going to stop it by listening to common sense wisdom..."

-JD Vance (2024)

"Science knows it doesn't know everything; otherwise, it'd stop. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you."

Dara O Briain (2006)

"Truthiness (noun) - the belief in what you feel to be true rather than what the facts will support."

-Stephen Colbert (2005)

"...what is really happening...is nothing less than a cultural assault on any person or institution that operates in reality. If you are a weatherperson, you're a target. The same goes for journalists, election workers, scientists, doctors, and first responders. These jobs are different, but the thing they share is that they all must attend to and describe the world as it is."

-Charlie Warzel (2024)

"Voters rarely seek out fact-checking aimed at their party, and conservatives in particular hear constant criticism of the enterprise, which makes them doubt its validity. (According to a 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center, 70 percent of Republicans believe that fact-checkers favor one side, while only 29 percent of Democrats do.) ... politicians lie because they believe they'll score more points than they'll lose."

-Bill Adair (2024)

"Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information...I would just like to see [television] reflect occasionally the hard, unyielding realities of the world in which we live...Our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us..."

-Edward Murrow (1958)

"Facts don't care about your feelings."

-Ben Shapiro (2016)

"No one's faith, lived experience, or personal 'truth' is exempt from the burdens of conversations. At its best, sustained conversation wins converts in both directions and, more important, may transform moral horror at someone disagreeing with you into trust that people who disagree can also listen, reflect, and do things together. Cultivating strong mistrust is a way of giving up on others, a kind of quiet quitting for civic life."

-Jedediah Britton-Purdy (2024)

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command...The obvious, the silly and the true had got to be defended."

-George Orwell (1949)

"Oh say what is truth? 'Tis the fairest gem that the riches of worlds can produce, And priceless the value of truth will be when The proud monarch's costliest diadem Is counted but dross and refuse."

-John Jacques (1851)

"I still can't believe that the trick to defeating journalism was to just be so openly evil that reporting on it accurately sounds partisan."

-@JohnnyMcNulty (2020)

Getting on the Peace Train

This post has been a few days in the making. For context, I included what I’ve written over the past few days about all of this. For the Too Long/Didn’t Read version, skip to the section labeled Conclusion.

PART 1: The Set Up

Last Wednesday, the day before the first Presidential Debate of this election cycle, I shared this on

social media along with some information from a non-partisan, faith-based organization about what to

expect in the debate: MWEG (Mormon Women for Ethical Government).

This has been on my mind for the past week or so.

I love this country. I love the democratic process.

I'm excited for this debate because it will be just the candidates speaking about issues in their own words.

No hype. No spin. Just them.

I'll be watching. Here's details on how you can too.

*Here's details should have been "here are," but it's what I said, and I'm not changing that now. So, la.

...

I stand by what I said. But I also understand why many people decided not to watch.

Debates can be unpleasant, and long, and the benefits don’t seem to outweigh the costs. 

"By all accounts, it doesn't make sense."

I did watch it. And it was ugly and unpleasant and discouraging. 

I have so many thoughts after that first debate. A lot of those thoughts are specific, and I am interested in having conversations about it.

But I am not interested in having that conversation publicly on social media. 

I imagine social media to be a bit like a school multi-purpose space–the kind that has a stage and a cafeteria and maybe a piano and the lost and found. And “posting” is like standing up on that stage with a megaphone. You might only mean to be announcing things to some of the people in that room, or maybe you’re just having fun announcing things for your own entertainment. But really, lots of people you never think about can hear you on social media. Suddenly, you can find yourself having an impromptu, loud-speaker-style conversation with a handful of people who chose to respond to you in view of everyone who might be passing through that space. 

It is a public forum presenting itself as a casual conversation between friends. And, unplanned public statements have tendencies to go poorly at some point. 

…

PART 2: Peace Train

I recently read an old blog post from 2019 (Sunday Devotional, actually from MWEG) called

“Pursuing Peace on the Train” that presents two approaches to making peace in a situation

where there is conflict. The author, Jennifer Walker Thomas, talks about being stuck on a train

on a family trip in Europe. The title immediately evoked for me the 1971 Cat Stevens song,

"Peace Train." I really like the message of the song which also connects to a central idea

in Walker Thomas’ essay – peace is a choice. I especially like these two stanzas from Stevens' song:

Now I've been crying lately

Thinkin' about the world as it is

Why must we go on hating?

Why can't we live in bliss?

'Cause out on the edge of darkness

There rides a peace train

Oh, peace train take this country

Come take me home again

Stevens and Walker Thomas both invite us to choose peace, even though it seems far away--"out on the edge of darkness." But the crucial question is how? It’s all well and good to say, “Glide on the peace train,” but that seems like wishful thinking without practical application. 

On her actual train ride, Walker Thomas explains how she maintained peace by choosing not to engage with an unpleasant, loud, fellow-American voicing his political views and prejudices. 

The man and his companions were also sitting in the seats she and her family had purchased. She would have been in her rights to ask him to relocate. But she chose to avoid the conflict to keep peace. Avoidance is absolutely one path to peace. And sometimes, it’s the best solution when it seems like there isn’t another way out. But it still didn’t sit well with her: 

I did nothing.

I believed that it was the right choice in the moment, because under the circumstances

there was no way to engage peacefully. But in the days following, my mind would return

to the train, and I would mentally argue with someone I had seen once and would never

see again. He had been wrong about almost everything (I am sure of it!), and I was

anxious that in leaving those wrongs unanswered I, too, had been wrong.

 …I felt that the decision to not engage was my only option, because the train was already

filled with tension, because I was never going to change his mind, because I didn’t want

to put my children at risk, because he was clearly a difficult and prejudiced human.

There were countless “becauses,” and all were external to me.

This is where she realizes a second path to peace:

Then after a few days of stewing, it sunk in. The real reason I couldn’t 

engage was simply because I wasn’t prepared. The “because” was

actually internal, and I was the obstacle and potentially also  

a difficult and prejudiced human. There likely would have been

a way to engage with him and bring peace, but in that moment

I wasn’t emotionally and spiritually developed enough to transcend

my  personal discomfort and frustration. My charity had failed.

Two paths to peace are clearly laid out here. And I think there are some valuable

takeaways from Walker Thomas’ experience. 

Option 1: Avoid 

Avoiding confrontation is a safe, self-preservatory response. But as she explains,

walking away from the conversation she so desperately wanted to engage in left her

unsettled and upset. She “stewed” about it for days after. She avoided the conflict in the

moment, but she was still left with inner turmoil over leaving this man’s comments

unanswered. In this case, her external avoidance caused an internal conflict which she

later had to find a way to resolve for herself. 

This can still be the safest path forward. Time and space to process can help us view things with a calmness and clarity after our immediate, often reactionary responses have subsided. 

Option 2: Engage

Walker Thomas’ epiphany is also instructive; “the real reason I couldn’t engage was simply because I wasn’t prepared.” Peaceful engagement in conflict, she suggests, requires two things 

– preparation and acceptance. 

 Preparation

She says that she was not “emotionally and spiritually developed enough to transcend my personal discomfort and frustration.” That kind of “transcendence” requires staying calm and pushing past our comfort zones. Developing those skills takes intentional work and practice. And to be fair, that kind of effort might not seem worth the energy just so we can respond to a belligerent stranger in public or on the internet. 

But this preparation can be worth the effort when it means being able to engage calmly with friends and family who we care about deeply and want to talk with about important issues. Preparation can help us develop emotional resilience and a sense of ‘spiritual’ centeredness that helps us meter and regulate our emotional responses in the moment. With practice, we can apply that filter to our responses in real time.  

Acceptance 

I think the second part of Walker Thomas’ ‘ah-ha’ about her experience on the train is even more important than the first. She says, “I was the obstacle and potentially also a difficult and prejudiced human,” It’s accepting that we cannot always be 100% right about everything and that that’s OK. 

If we’re going to engage in a conversation about something controversial that we have strong opinions about, we have to own that we probably are carrying some unfair biases and that we probably have some assumptions that don’t take into account the perspectives of people on the other side of the issue. 

We have to accept that while we can tell people how we feel and why we think those things, we cannot presume to know what they think or why they think those things without them telling us.

Conclusion

It’s hard to talk about politics without it getting ugly and personal. We saw that on Thursday night in the first presidential debate. We have no good models for civil discourse across party lines on the current political stage. So we have to make our own. And some people have started doing that. And that gives me hope.

BRAVER ANGELS, is one of a number of organizations dedicated to overcoming the partisan divide in our country. (3 Minute Video explaining Braver Angels) 

I’m also a big fan of this group – Mormon Women for Ethical Government. (Here is a link to their 6 Principals of Peacemaking.) 

More and more, I think people are looking for opportunities to engage across the political divide to build peace.

It’s easy to feel discouraged by the relentless negativity of politics right now. And it makes sense why so many people choose to look away. It appears that doing anything else is an exercise in futility. Why bother talking to someone who is a political “other” when they exist in an entirely different reality from you? Why waste time and energy on conversations that can only end badly?

This, in a nutshell, is where I think the majority of us are as a country when it comes to discussing the highly controversial issues that surround us. Things seem pretty bleak. And if perception is our reality, then they are dismal. But maybe we can shift our perception by building a new narrative. 

I don't think it's overly idealistic to have hope for a better tomorrow. I don't think it's unreasonable to believe people with massive differences in opinion and viewpoint can come to better understand one another.

The media cocoons we get wrapped up in share the same objective -- to profit off of our engagement. So smart people design addictive content that provides us dopamine hits every time we engage in incendiary content that reinforces angry, divisive opinions. 

I believe we can break down false narratives that are propped up by people who stand to gain money and influence from our rage and distrust of each other by simply talking with and listening to people who we disagree with. 

So why do the work? Why get on “the peace train?” 

Because we care.

I am not ready to give up on the American experiment. But if we believe we are already divided, and our goal is to defeat those we see as “other,” then we’ve already given up. 

I’m a fan of disrupting the false narrative that half the nation is made up of jerks who want to hurt the other half. The first step toward doing that is choosing to listen to one another. I think most of us want to work towards a better tomorrow. So, I’m choosing peace. And I’m working on choosing to engage instead of avoid. If you'd like to try that with me, we can figure out how to do it together. 

…

Links:

“Peace Train” by Cat Stevens

“Peace Train” Lyrics

“Pursuing Peace on the Train” by Jennifer Walker Thomas

Braver Angels Alliances – I want to get involved in these. LMK if you want to talk about doing that too.