Why Can't We Talk to Each Other?

Discussion is how democracy survives

Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

You may not have heard, but there was a little election last week in America.

And the internet lost its mind.

Instead of talking to the people we disagree with, we are hell-bent on destroying and silencing them.

Most of my feed on Threads and Instagram is made up of people from the Left, while my Twitter has a lot of people from the Right.

Here are a few of the types of comments I saw from the Left:

If you voted for Trump, fuck off and die.

All Trump supporters should do us a favor and off themselves.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t want transgender people to exist.

Blocking anyone who didn’t vote for Harris.

I’m entrenched in the fiction author community (BookTok, Bookstagram) and there was even a witch hunt; trying to find authors who sided with the Republicans (or even anyone who didn’t vote Blue) and then blacklisting their books.

And before we think it’s just the Left having a meltdown let’s remember how certain people invaded the Capitol Building when Trump lost last time.

The temptation when we are confronted by what we disagree with is to block it, burn it, destroy it. Not to reason with it.

This goes back to our hunter-gatherer days when the tribe across the valley was a real threat. If they came over to our side, we might very well be murdered and our resources stolen.

We are wired for tribal think; to destroy the other group.

And its easy to destroy something if you don’t get to know it.

Today, if you vote Red, you hate gay people. If you vote Blue, you’re Woke and hate white men.

Reducing people down to simple one sentence statements is dumb. As it that statement if you think about it.

The reality of why people vote the way they do; of why they think the way they do, can never be summed up into a cliché.

Someone who voted for Trump may not have been thinking about gender issues at all; what matters for them is that their jobs have been lost due to globalization. Someone who voted for Harris may not give a crap about social justice; they just hate Trump.

And blocking them on social media is one of the worse things we can do.

To be sure, if anyone is actually calling for the murder of a group of people, which is genocide, then that speech ought to be barred.

But if someone is expressing their opinion, that is another matter.

Some of you will say “we can disagree about pizza toppings but not human rights”—oh God I saw that thousands of times replayed on social media.

That pizza argument is too simple.

It assumes that to be of a conservative mindset is to not care about human rights.

It assumes that the person on the other side of the divide voted against you because of hate and bigotry.

Maybe they did, but a vote as litmus test is to enough to know that. That person views the world differently, has a different idea of what a threat is, understands democracy-America-life in a vastly different way.

Now, if you don’t care about politics, I have sympathy for you. Cut out anyone saying things you don’t want to listen to on social media. That’s fair.

But, if you want to change things politically (a fancy way to say you want to solve problems) you MUST listen to them and converse with them.

When you make the decision to block someone on social media you are:

1. Giving up your right to influence them.

2. Saying their opinion doesn’t matter.

3. You create an echo chamber and will have no idea what the other side thinks.

Now, you might think “I don’t give a shit about the other side, fuck ‘em.”

And you can feel whatever you feel, sure. But the problem is now your political rival has become a political enemy.

With a rival, you can shout and argue, you can fight, but you both agree to try to figure it out. One of you can be wrong and the other right. You may despise their position, but you can talk to them. Hopefully with the aim of changing their minds.

But what do you with an enemy?

The only way to win there is to defeat them. By any means necessary.

If you want war, then go ahead.

Also, by blocking, you don’t give them an alternative. You allow them them to become further entrenched in their views.

Example: young white men are shifting more Rightward and helped Trump get into power (important to note: Trump got less votes this time than four years ago, he only won because the Democrats got less votes than last time).

You can ignore that group and ridicule them. Then don’t be surprised when they become more passionate worshippers of Trump. Or, you can try and figure out how to reach out to that demographic and change their sympathies.

That’s all I have. Hate the policies you hate, fight for the future you want, but you have to learn to do that with your political rivals, otherwise they’ll be your enemy for all of time, and the only resolution to that is to burn it all down to the ground.