This essay is part of an op-ed project, Cardinal Way: Civility Rules. The project is to encourage constructive dialogue on difficult issues. You can participate in the project by telling us your thoughts on difficult conversations.
We recently had a U.S. senator who threatened to get into a fist fight at a hearing with a witness who had said bad things about him.
Ideally, none of your Thanksgiving gatherings devolved into fisticuffs.
Last week’s Cardinal Way package dealt with ways to avoid nasty political arguments at the Thanksgiving table, although the advice offered by Dana Ackley, president of a Roanoke-based coaching firm, and Jennifer Mongold, an associate dean at King University in Bristol, Tennessee, applies to other holidays or gatherings of any sort, for that matter.
We asked readers for their feedback. John Blair of Staunton offered this advice: “I try humor when things turn political. One of the best jokes to defuse a political argument is this: A liberal wife and conservative husband have been arguing all day. They walked past a herd of jackasses. The husband points at them and asks, ‘Relatives of yours?’ The wife says, ‘Sure are. They’re my in-laws.’”
We cannot vouch for how well that joke works.
Other readers had more general thoughts on the topic of how to promote civility in both our public and personal lives.
Interestingly, two people in two different communities cited local efforts that are underway to promote civility. Bill Mosley of Bedford said he was a member of Bedford GetTogether, “and our goal is much the same as yours … to work toward bringing about mutual understanding, trust and respect.” Karl Busch in Washington County said he was part of a group that’s “interested in starting an open forum civics dialogue to promote open non partisan driven discussion on issues with local impact and also national issues which have impact here as well but aren’t just headlines.”
Are there similar groups in other localities? If so, we’d love to hear about them.
Some readers who responded to our online survey felt that civility is easy, changing people’s minds is hard.
“Politics is far downstream of culture,” Blair said. “When I have been embedded in a culture with very deep values/views, I’m not going to magically ‘switch sides’ like a WWF wrestler based on you quoting a statistic. Persuasion is a long-term process that includes a deep respect for already-existent belief systems. A 2-minute soliloquy quoting stats isn’t going to move the needle.”
Scott Moree agreed that it’s hard to change people’s minds: “We are a country ideologically divided, with a diminishing center. Dissent and destruction are monetized by the media (which is anything but a professional arena) and many of the weakest among our species serve as our political leaders. That environment is not likely to change in your lifetime. If you want to preserve diverse friendships, rather than live in an echo chamber, just maintain an ‘open to listen’ [attitude] and don’t seek to be a reformer of others’ political or religious views.”
Or, as Charlie Kramer put it: “I wish people understood that they’re getting ‘rage farmed’ by social media and its modern day PT Barnums.”
That matches some of the comments we heard in our first round — that social media is doing more to divide us than unite us.
Sandy Munnell offered this insight: “Trust is required to have conversations with those who you know disagree with you. Developing that trust has to be part of the process of getting to meaningful conversations. Setting a bunch of rules, like no swearing, or no personal attacks, won’t get you to trust. I hope you continue to disallow public commenting. Even requiring a name on the post won’t guarantee civility. If I have a thought I think worth sharing, I email the article’s author.”
(No worries, Sandy. One of the first and easiest decisions we at Cardinal made was to not allow commenting. When news sites allow commenting, those comments are invariably taken over by trolls and require a lot of moderation to prevent libel, spam and other nasty things.)
“I think we have in common a deficiency of humility,” Carolyn Caywood said. “When I am certain, it becomes very hard for me to listen, much less consider a middle ground. Worse, the thing we all seem most certain about is feeling under threat. Being certain I’m right may be my defense against the threat posed by the people who are wrong. Perhaps we need to recover courage before we can risk humility?”
What do you think about how we can all promote civility with those whom we might disagree with politically? You can offer your thoughts in our online form.
