Things We Aren't Supposed to Talk About

Things we aren't supposed to talk about. This is the Elevate Fold Podcast, and I'm your host, Chrissanne Long. And with me, as always, is Rob Arturi.

Hello.

We're not supposed to talk about things.

Yeah. So this podcast was— is about kind of laying the groundwork for a lot of other conversations that we're going to have. I think it's something that you and I do more intuitively than most people, which is why we've been able to have conversations about things that maybe we don't agree on entirely, but we've never had any issue.

Right.

But I started to think about it and I thought about how that's not really inherent within society overall, and certainly Lakeland's no exception.

Right.

And if you look back at some of the more divisive things that we've had to deal with, you can see that playing out.

Yeah. So I'm going to frame this a little bit too, because you and I had some conversations leading up to this show that, you know, we had been encouraged to talk about the issues. And when I was encouraged to talk about the issues, I'm thinking, How do we talk about the issues the way that we would perceive or view the issues? Because you and I have a totally different way of talking about issues than I think what was intended by that statement of, "You need to talk about the issues." That's a good chance. Which basically was saying, "I want you to pick a side and talk about the side that I agree with and talk about things from that perspective." And I'm not going to lie, I have opinions about a lot of things. But I am also a person who, um, I'm not a divisive person by nature. So if I'm going to share something about a position I have, it's going to be well, well researched, or it's going to be padded with, hey, this is just my opinion and you're free to have a different opinion, but this is where I am and this is why.

Well, and I think there's a lot of people that are like you in, in that regard. So anybody that knows you or knows of you even, I think would agree with that statement that your mission, your goal is to bring people together, right?

Right.

And I think for the most part, the average person out there kind of believes the same thing. They feel the same way. Most people are not inherently in their core divisive people.

So why are we such a divisive society? Well— In your opinion.

In my opinion, we're not, But what's happening is we've gotten to a point where we have, for the sake of families, friendships, employment, basically put off talking about things. You know, the old adage, don't talk about politics or religion.

Right.

Because that divides people. Well, why does it divide people? I reject that concept. And in fact, I think the opposite is true. I think what's happened, and maybe, I think that that advice was not maliciously put forth. I think it had good intentions, right? Just avoid it altogether and everything will be better. Well, that's a short-term remedy that in and of itself is not without consequence.

Right.

And now what we're starting to deal with are the consequences of that way of thinking.

So I'm gonna say where I came from is a place where we sat around the dinner table in the evenings, it was sobremesa in my Cuban family. Sobremesa is over the table, basically. You eat your dinner and then you sit down, you continue sitting down and you have conversations. So I have fond memories of my stepdad calling me out on things I was wrong about, like blatantly wrong, but positioning as if I was right, telling him this is a fact, and then him calling me out. We didn't have Google or cell phones or anything in the early '90s, but, my beliefs were not something I was afraid to share. And I think over time I started to realize that my beliefs were only my own perspective, but there was another perspective and then there was the facts. And so I was raised with a healthy sense of sharing ideas and sharing, debating an idea or a discussion, but then walking away not angry at each other.

Sure.

Except when he told me, "Wrong again, cauliflower breath," which I have no idea what that means, but that's what he would say to me.

Is that even possible?

A cauliflower breath?

I don't know.

But that was what he would say when he would prove me wrong.

Maybe that's a nice thing to say because I don't know that I've ever— I don't know how you would make that distinction. So maybe it's like, I'm going to say this about you because it sounds like a—

It sounds funny, but it's not really insulting.

Right.

Right.

Right. Yeah, so I grew up similar, talked politics, but never really got, it was not a heated thing because everything was pretty much issue-centric.

Right.

And essentially what's happened to us by virtue of two things. Number one, as I mentioned, putting aside the conversation, not having those conversations has allowed us or has rather caused us to, to create echo chambers. You hear that word, echo chambers, right? Well, as if it's something that people purposefully do. Now, some people do because they're passionate about their opinions, but they're not really learned about them. So when you go to an echo chamber, you can feel warm and fuzzy around like-minded people. But that's just a minority. The other echo chamber is the fact that we avoid talking about issues because we are afraid to alienate people. We have good intentions, but what that means is that we only feel safe talking about politics or religion or what have you around other people like us that we know agree with us.

That believe what we believe, yep.

Because then there's no danger of us alienating them or making them mad, and they're not gonna be my friend, or there'll be negative repercussions in the office or whatever it might be.

Right.

So because of that, We've kind of self-segregated our ideas. And then you couple the media, right? Now the media, I know from, you know, certain, there's a certain political narrative that the media is very much one-sided and I tend to agree with that. But I think that both sides politically in their respective media organizations, the media has realized that what sells, what makes money, what gets clicks, what gets people to watch commercials is basically pandering to that, that bias.

It's a bombastic title of an article. It's not telling the truth in the article, but on the, on the surface, it's getting into the truth further down where no one is actually reading it.

Right.

But you're, you're creating— it's kind of creating a stirring of the pot, right, to get people to read. And yes, so I agree with you on that.

Everything is an existential threat.

And because the media game is about financially staying stable, right? We have— we're kind of at the mercy of whatever's going to make a buck, right, for the media companies, right?

So now I watch various media sources. I don't allow any of them to necessarily get me riled up, and I see through ones on both sides that are merely throwing meat to the lions that share that ideology, right? Right. Um, I do this not because I fundamentally disagree on certain issues, but because I think it has become like political theater. It's done, now it's gone from the media, it's done by our elected officials who just say whatever in the most editorialized fashion and flat out lie in many respects. And it's all done because it's all playing to that sharp, divide. So all of these things, it's not even that the divide really exists. It's that it's been promoted and nurtured for a while now. We tend to embrace it because it protects us from fallout or from hurting somebody else's feelings when we really don't want to. The negative consequence of all of this is that we are on a path where that divide will be more than just a media construct and, uh, and something that we do for the sake of, uh, keeping things pathetic and it will be real.

Right.

And that's what personally I hope to avoid. And I think that we're committed when we talk about political things locally or issues that might be charged here or there, that we have kind of a mindset of how we're going to do that, because I think it's going to make— it works better for this podcast and I think it works better for people in general, just in their daily lives.

From our perspective, and I want to— this is where, you know, we could have this episode and there'll be people listening that go, they're just not talking about anything. They're just saying nothing. And they're talking about all of these things to say absolutely nothing. But I want the reality to come out, which is I am not a person who's on this show to pick a side and make enemies or pick a side and make friends. I really want to be on this show for the purposes of being objective about issues and not playing favorites or becoming someone's favorite person because I picked their side. So I don't feel like that's going to be productive in the long run anyway. That's my personal side of things. And so as I'm talking to Rob about how are we going to actually address the issues, he's coming up with a solution for how we will be able to do that by kind of talking about our philosophies. Whether you agree with us politically or not, you can still be somebody who would want to listen to this show because we're going to talk about both sides and do the best that we can at conveying, you know, a factual, non-clickbaity type of discussion.

Right. There's a great book by Scott Adams called Loser Think.

And I don't like that title. So let me explain to you. I know, I know. But see, here's the thing. The first thing I hear is a negative, and I know that it's got really good merit inside of the meat of the book. So I'm not discarding it. But for anyone who's going to hear the title of the book, that's just going to be like, loser think, well, that's a, you know, whatever. Please understand that it's got a good story behind it.

Right. Because it is not, it's not about the person. It's about the practice.

Right.

You're not calling somebody a loser, but it's if you use this particular way of looking at the world and at arguments and at debating with people and discussing things with people, you are bound to lose in the process.

Right.

That's why it's loser think. It's not that you're a loser if you don't agree with X or you don't agree with Y.

Yes. Thank you for clarifying. That's the clarification I That's actually the antithesis of the entire book.

And it is not a book written— Scott Adams is a very, I would say, a moderate person. He calls balls and strikes. There's a lot of things that he likes about both sides, and he's open about that and critical of both sides. But he's very candid about his beliefs. But the premise of the book is we all see things through our own logic and reasoning, and we don't understand how to think like everybody. A teacher thinks different than an engineer that thinks different than a chemist who thinks different than an actress who thinks different than a songwriter. All of these people have different ways of thinking and analyzing. The more hats that you've worn in your life, the better off you are because you tend to think, you've thought like different types of people from different places, and that's helpful. But nobody has all of it. So the skillset essentially with this is understanding why or where other people are coming from, from the way that they're thinking. But rather than getting too deep into the specifics of it, the fundamental premise is we need to focus on the issues, not the people.

There we go. Yep.

And that's become in this country, we use people like avatars. And if you don't like the avatar, everything that that person person has done, said, represents, what have you, is bad. It's tainted. And it doesn't matter where your politics are. So this is a bipartisan issue. People on all sides do this. It's important for us because we are committed to having the conversation be beneficial. And when I discuss politics with people, my goal isn't necessarily to persuade them to believe what I believe. My goal is to get an understanding of why they believe what they believe, and then maybe explain to them why I believe what I believe. And then we can leave with our own moral judgments and our own factual judgments, but we'll have some sort of an understanding. But when everything starts with a moral judgment, "Oh, you support taking away a monument? Well, you're a bad person.

You're a socialist." And so we're afraid to share that we're in support or not in support of something because It's a moral judgment on who I am as a human being, as opposed to how I approached to get to the point where I believe this, or this is what I believe needs to happen.

Right. And rather than talking about the ideas, because that's harder, on a broad sense, what we've done as a society is we've ceded the decision-making process to people whose opinions that we buy into.

I think the big shift has been that social media and media has completely changed.

Yes.

So anyone can have a channel. Anyone can have— like, we have our own podcast so we can do— we can talk about what we want to talk about. And you get to choose to listen to this podcast or another, and you get to choose to not listen to any of the, the research-based information that's out there in, in the grand scheme of the thing. And it's harder now than ever to actually find factual-based media being delivered. So you're, you're eventually, I mean, your parent, my parents used to say you're the sum of the 5 people that you hang out with. So if, if that is applicable to what you're listening to and you're hearing all of the same things over and over and over again, it's obvious that you're going to eventually begin to believe what you're hearing without seeing another side or hearing another side or looking to, to find another side, which is why at the root of it, your focus should be on the principles, on the issues, more than the hyperbole and all of the hype.

Now, that also is harder to do today than ever before.

It is very difficult. There's always a winner and a loser in the way that politics are displayed in the current state of things. And the people who are really losing, in my opinion, are us who just want to know where we are as a country and how do we get to a better place?

Well, you know, this podcast is locally centric, so we're not gonna do the national politics, but quite frankly, whether it's local politics, all of it scales up. The premise is the same. I've seen it done here with respect to certain issues, certain campaign finance issues where a line is drawn and you are either a Hatfield or a McCoy. That's called dichotomist thinking, and it is a fallacy that we all engage in from time to time, but it has become pervasive lately, and it's become one of the only ways we discuss politics anymore. And the sad part is, number one, it is extremely ineffective in any kind of argument because essentially the argument is A is right and B is wrong. And then we've ratcheted it up to put a moral rider on this where not only is A right, but A is good. B is not only wrong, but it is evil.

Bad. Exactly.

The world is not a fight between good and evil. And that is especially true here in our country and locally in our community. Everybody that disagrees with us is not an evil person.

Right. Well, and I don't feel comfortable tooting my own horn, but I I do feel compelled to share in this episode some specific things that people have said to me as feedback to when I do get on a little bit of a platform and say something that is political. So we recently had Vice President Pence come through town, and I was super excited. It's the closest that I've ever been to someone so high, such a high-ranked elected official. And I was giddy like a little child, like, oh my gosh, it's the vice president.

Eee!

Immediately there were bombastic comments. There were insulting comments. There were moral judgment comments on the fact that I was sharing that I was happy to see the vice president. So I go out on social media and I share, you know, the vice president just came through and here are my thoughts about this. And I really don't want us to get to a position where this is where we are as a, as a community or as a country. And the comments that I got from that are naturally going to be very echo chamber-ish. Right? They're just going to be people agreeing with me. But there were some in there that were like, thank you for sharing this. And I know because I know them that they're on an opposite side of the political spectrum from where I am. We've had conversations and civil discourse on that regard. But I've also— I also received private messages where someone specifically said, I know where you are politically and I love how you're able to not give into it, right? And not be all about that. And so I think I think where I come from is, am I going to change anything by spewing my political beliefs or my opinions in a, in a conversation that's not designed for that purpose in the first place?

Right.

That's to me, it's a waste of energy and a waste of time for me to say I'm going to post this thing because I am either trying to prove a point and win or I am trying to create community and I can't do both at the same time. Sure. And so in those kinds of things, I'm just, I think I don't think I have a gift. I'm very mindful of who's going to be reading the conversation. If all of my friends all believe the way I believe, then it would be easy for me to just be like, whatever I want to say, whatever I know everyone I believe believes what I believe.

Let me interrupt you and just say that when somebody says, wow, look at this, the vice presidential motorcade is coming through our town, that's kind of neat. The flip side of that is not, well, How could you even celebrate such a thing?

Do you know what he voted this for that or the other thing? And the truth is, honestly, that wasn't even a thought on my mind.

And I know that. There's a third way of looking at these things, which is the fact that a presidential motorcade comes through Lakeland and that there was a reason for that means that at least our little hamlet is worth stopping at.

Right. We're on the map.

There was a time when that idea that, wow, at least where we live is important enough for somebody to want to stop and wave or whatever. Now, and we're not in Iowa. Now, Florida is an important state, but Florida isn't Iowa where everybody goes to these little diners all the time and does all of these things.

Right.

So the point is that it was noteworthy to say, and that's what you did, but what you saw was the symptom, the side effects of what I was talking about earlier. My purpose for this is having productive arguments and disputes and debates with people.

For what we want to talk about on the show.

Right.

I want to go back to what you said earlier about it's— so we've made this more about people or avatars, as you use the example, than we have about issues. And I said a long time ago that it's the special interests in the national politics that really cause a lot of slowdown in the— it's a quagmire as far as progress, because you can decide you're going to vote for or against one person because of one special interest or one specific thing that they're for or against, which is completely kind of, to me, the challenge of what we're trying to achieve in a local perspective, because you know these people. You know who's running for office. You have history with them. You've, you've maybe been on boards with them, or you've met them in real life, and you know how they behave, and, and you don't like that, or you do like that. But if we can get to the heart of what their positions are as far as how they're going to advance the community and, and support the issue that they're in support of that is aligned with what we believe, then we're not making it personal because it shouldn't be personal. It should be Well, let's take an issue that's a specific issue, right?

We've kind of talked about it a little bit, but so we had Howard Wiggs and Linda Wiggs on the podcast, and Howard mentioned that he was adamantly opposed to the relocation of the monument in Munn Park.

Right.

Personally, I had a much more ambivalent view.

Mm-hmm.

As did I. I wasn't calling for it to be blown up with dynamite, but I wasn't really married to it and I didn't have a connection to it, so I felt differently about it. But here's the thing, if I immediately look at that and go, well, this is a Confederate monument, he wants the monument here, the Confederacy was essentially a fight versus slavery versus abolition, ergo, in my mind, I'm going to believe that Howard Wiggs, former mayor, must be a racist. This is the false, the ludicrous mind reading.

The dots that are connected that are not true. Right.

That goes on all the time. And in reality, if we're going to start assuming that we know what people are thinking, okay? It happened to Ron DeSantis when he used the word articulate to describe Andrew Gillum. Now, my personal belief is it is racist to make that connection in the first place because that's a very archaic way of looking at where that was not the norm. Okay? Mm-hmm. You can go to colleges, universities within Polk County, within Lakeland, all the way around the country that have people of all races represented. And to think that it is somehow a remote special thing when somebody of color is articulate is noteworthy. Is very, very antiquated. And somebody who is as young as DeSantis and former military, it is unlikely to me that that's his way of thinking. But the argument was made by a lot of people that it was a quote, "dog whistle to people." When we engage in mind reading of people who we don't agree with—

Drawing conclusions based on something. Someone's going to draw that conclusion and then share that conclusion and then everyone's going to jump on that as a factually-based decision or thing.

That is a very, very dangerous way to live.

Yeah, very slippery slope.

You don't want to live in a world like that.

No.

Because it will be used against you at some point.

Well, and I can give you a personal example that has absolutely nothing to do with politics. And now that people know who I am, it's easy to share this story. So I don't know, 8 years ago, we started doing cash mobs. Right. And there was no buy-in. No one had to pay a penny for us to do a cash mob. Wanted to be a part of the local buying community and share that buy local message like we have always been doing. And so it got a lot of traction. People were excited. We had hundreds of people RSVPing that they were going to be at the very first cash mob. The Ledger picked it up and there's this person who doesn't know me, but it's all about the money and it's all about this and it's all about that. And I'm thinking, anybody who's jumping on that bandwagon hasn't spent any time to figure out where this is coming from, what the purpose is, or what we're trying to achieve. So it's really super simple to have one person with a negative slant or a negative take or a bad experience or just wanting to stir the pot to start creating an entire different perception.

Sure.

Of a very positive, well-meaning effort to bring community together to support small businesses.

I'll give you a more contemporary example. And that is the Lakeland First Political Action Committee endorsing certain candidates, one of which was Chad McLeod. And I have heard some people argue that that is a negative against him. The irony is that before he decided to run, the PAC was going to support his opponent. And he has no control over who supports him and who doesn't.

Right.

But the conclusion was drawn that because this entity that some people do not like for whatever reasons, and we're not going to get into the pros and the cons of the Lakeland First Pact, that's another show. But the premise is because this group liked him and I think that group is evil, therefore he must be evil. This is the dichotomist way of thinking because everything is either A or B.

Black or white.

It's dichotomous thinking. That is extremely dangerous, whether you agree with it because of that or you disagree with it. So I want to be an equal opportunity here. Supporting something based upon that premise is just as wrong. So this is not a moral judgment just because I agree with it, then that's okay. That's not okay.

Right. And so let's go back to really where I think the meat of this discussion is, is where I feel like we're cutting ourselves off at the knees and not allowing— so I, I am a writer. My default is to write things down. Yours is to talk them out. So when I'm talking them out and I'm— this is why I was so against the idea of a podcast, because I'm going to say something and it's going to be ridiculous and it's not going to make any sense. Like, by golly, it's not going to have any, like, place here. And because I need to be able to write down what I'm going to say before I'm going to say it, or at least that's my comfort. Okay. So when I'm having a conversation with someone who may think differently than I think, and I'm not able to, to just say something off the cuff, unplanned, natural, organic dialogue that we're having, and someone's like, well, cuts me off, I don't even have time to walk myself into the holes that I might find myself into because I, I will honestly say I'm wrong when I get to the end of the sentence. I'm like, oh well, Now I realize how stupid that sounds, but it sounded cool in my head. And now when I get to the end of the sentence, I realize that that's wrong. We need to let people have the time to talk through what they believe so that they can talk themselves out once they've heard it. So I do that a lot. I'll talk something through. Like I said, I would with conviction sit at the dinner table as a 19, 20-year-old and share something and then hear the other side and go, oh yeah, you're right. I didn't think about it that way. And I think a lot of people are like that. Like we just, Initially, we think something, but once we have more information, we'll change our minds. Okay.

So there's a lot there.

Unpack it.

Well, unpack. I don't understand that phrase, but I've used it plenty of times and a lot of people use it. Okay. So the best way to start with all of this is to start with the understanding that the goal of having a conversation, the goal of talking through these things, is not to change an opinion, whether it's your own or somebody else's. We tend to look at debate as if it is a trial. Mm-hmm. We grew up watching LA Law and Law Order, and then Law Order, the 50 different incarnations of that show and all this stuff. And we tend to think that that type of formal debate results in a verdict. Either you are guilty or innocent, you're right or you're wrong. And if you start off with that in mind, you've already lost. That's where the loser think comes in.

Right.

The goal should be to gain a greater understanding yourself and gain a greater understanding of what somebody else believes. In doing that, one of two things will happen. You will either realize that The beliefs that you held, well, actually there's a few different potential outcomes, but the first being what you believed is what you believe, and you are stronger in your convictions than you were before you had the conversation. Number 2 is that maybe you did jump the gun. Maybe you now have been exposed to some other things and you realize, well, maybe there's more to this. Okay? That's where the world of nuance comes in. Not everything is black and white. So the dichotomous thinking doesn't even, not only is it a bad way to go, but for a lot of situations, it doesn't work. And lastly, you might realize, you know what, I still don't agree, but I understand where that person's coming from because of A, B, and C. Because I think that we should have nationalized Medicare for All, which personally I'm adamantly against. But somebody who wants that isn't necessarily a crazy socialist wanting to change every aspect of our government. But these are the wild generalities and the boxes we must put people in. We label them, we put them in boxes because we don't want to do the work of listening. And we don't want to do it for two reasons. Number one, we're scared that we'll be wrong, or maybe we're scared that what we thought was right is wrong. Number 2, people who don't have their own opinions, people who merely adopt the opinions of others, when they are asked to discuss those, even in a benign, nice way, they will quickly get nasty and angry. And it's a defense mechanism.

Because they really didn't form that opinion on their own.

It's not their opinion.

So they can't really defend it.

Right. Right.

And ultimately it becomes obvious quickly that I— that's just what someone said, which isn't something most people would just say. That's— I'm just passing on what somebody else told me.

Right.

I shared something once. It was a meme. It was a quote. It was something that came across my social media and I shared it without fact-checking. And it was a quote that was credited to President Lincoln. And it was not a quote from President Lincoln. And at that moment in time, I realized before I share, I am going to confirm that this quote came from or did not come from someone because I don't want to be the stupid person that's passing on something that someone else shared that I just blindly passed on. And I did. I blindly passed it on without— it was a good quote. I liked the message, but it wasn't a President Lincoln quote. And therefore now I look Dumb. And so going back to what you're saying, I'm confirming, we don't want to look like we don't know what we're talking about.

Right.

But when we're caught in a corner, we're going to lash out and we're going to say whatever we need to say to defend ourselves, because the only alternative is that we were not prepared enough to have the discussion in the first place, but we're willing to share the message in spite of the fact that we're really not prepared.

Right.

And I think that's where we are. So let's, let's just kind of go through some of our rules of productive discourse and And I wanted to just say the fact that I had this really great conversation with my mother about civil discourse and the fact that there is— it's a lost art. We don't really have civil discourse. You and I have found a way to have civil discourse, and maybe that's why people like listening to the podcast, because, you know, we're having a debate or a discussion on things that we're close to, but not always 100% in agreement with.

Because we're talking about ideas.

But we're talking about ideas.

We're not talking about each other because there's no— we're not making moral judgments.

Right. So I looked up the meaning, just for the sake of this discussion, of what civil discourse is, and it is engagement in discourse that is intended to enhance understanding.

Exactly.

So we're trying to— I'm having the conversation because I want to understand something better, and you're having the conversation because you want to understand something better. It is not a debate to win or lose a fight.

Right.

And therefore, if we approach the conversation with a mindset of this is civil discourse, a civil— we're going to be civil with one another, we're going to respect one another. We're going to give the person enough time to talk as much as they're going to give us. So it's, it's, it's dual, you know, in the, in the, in the quid pro quo kind of mindset. But we're coming from a place of respect. We know that they have a different worldview. They walk in the door from a different perspective, and they're also going to respect the fact that we come from a different worldview and we have a different perspective and that we're not enemies. We're not out to get each other. Right. We're not trying to— I mean, basically, at the end of the day, if two people from Polk County are having a discussion about national politics, there's really not much we can do to change the course of the direction of politics.

Well, it's true. It's also, we tend to give much more attention to, or much more weight and significance to the goings-on in politics. And as it's become more and more divisive, That has only become more and more of a thing.

Right. And we shut off the line of communication the minute we find something to disagree on.

When you give up any interest, when you stop paying attention, you are effectively giving these elected bureaucrats the keys to everything.

Right. Well, because you stopped listening.

Right.

And you've stopped caring because you now realize that You are different, or you believe that you are different from the elected officials and you're not. You are just as much the same as them as they are like you. However, what's dividing us or what's differentiating us is the fact that we're tired of listening. And now we're— I think you said we don't want to do the work because now we have to— like we talked about earlier, it's harder and harder to find the things between the other, the nuances and the misinformed shared person sharing something that's not accurate. And we're like, uh, let me just tune out.

Right.

But that's the worst thing that we can do. And ending the conversations before we're able to find the common ground, because on the other side of one argument, it's probably 995 other things that we agree with.

Sure.

But that one thing is cutting us off at the knees and not allowing us to continue to build the relationship or establish the trust.

It's also 995 things that are more significant in our actual lives than the—

probably the one thing that we're arguing about. Right. Yeah. Where I want to hold the bar for myself is always, okay, so we have two local leaders. One calls one out and the other one responds. How do we handle that as civically engaged citizens doing their best to make this community better? Than it was yesterday. And I don't know the answer to the question because it's a struggle of my own as I'm thinking, well, that was not cool that a local official called out another local official. And the local official now as a human being is the only answer is to respond in kind. Yeah. And who's going to throw and where is what we're going to reach an impasse. And along the way, we're watching the community pick a side because we're picking sides on people and relationships and not on what the actual issue is. One person decided to do something that I feel is demeaning and disrespectful, and the other person has decided to respond in kind. And now we start falling apart, just like we're falling apart on a national level. And I want us to be better than that. I want—

sure, the idea is we're going to default to, well, which of those two people do you like more than the other?

Yep.

And then that's the one that you're going to side with.

Which is— which of those two people has— I mean, because you, in a local environment, you also— I mean, this This is one of the pieces of advice I was given recently as a business owner. You know, I can't publicly come out in an environment that is going to potentially backfire on my business opportunities because this side or that side is potentially going to be, you know, be detrimental. You know, if I pick a side now, I'm losing the opportunities to do business with others in the other side. And so we're freezing ourselves, the silent minority, the silent majority is now this, this thing because we're not willing to risk our lives, our, our relationships, all of these things to create more divisiveness. So it's— we stay silent because we don't know how to engage in that discourse, in civil discourse, because it started with uncivil discourse. It started with two people going at each other trying to tear the other one down. And now we are left with no choices.

Right.

Either stay silent or pick a side.

The best way to look at those two things are what is the goal here? Is it to make a particular government entity better, which will serve the people better? Okay, if that's the goal, if we can all agree that's the goal, then what exactly, what are the pros and cons for both sides?

Right.

I have a certain view towards taxes because I have a certain rationale from my economics background of the role that they play in terms of government revenues, et cetera. The idea is if I focus it on a person, that may change if I like this person, but what they're doing is different than my core belief, right?

Right.

So if you dial things back, if you take the people out of the politics and you focus on the ideas, you focus on the policies, you at least have some chance of creating understanding.

Right. Some chance of creating understanding, I say finding common ground.

Right, right. That's a—

and building the relationship based on the common ground. Because I— there are people I disagree with. And if I meet you and we disagree immediately, there's very little chance we're going to form a trusting relationship that's going to develop over time. But if we approach the relationship first with where are we, where do we have common ground? And build the relationship around what we, what we share, then we have the ability to then say, all right, well, now I trust you. Now I don't feel threatened by you. Now I don't feel attacked by you. You don't feel attacked by me. I'm going to share this idea with you and see what you think.

Right.

But it's not going to be the end of everything because we have other things on which we can build that relationship. And the common ground is where we stand on similar, in a similar discourse.

Above all other things we've talked about, right? So you mentioned the fact-checking, right?

Yes.

Basically police yourself and do your due diligence.

Acknowledge that you're not going to change the other person's opinion. That's the biggest thing, especially using social media or any of that. I mean, of course, offline discourse is different than online discourse. But to, to do what you said earlier, which is the moral judgment, you know, oh my God, I can't believe you voted for so-and-so, right? You're going to shut that person down and you're not going to get to know the human being that's on the other side of the fact that they may have said something that you disagree with.

So let's talk about the online one real quick, though, because I found I used to do a lot of online political debating and I was just really just put off by what I was encountering. And I'm of the mindset, I'd rather have the conversation with you in person than online. There's two problems with online discussion. You can have it civilly. I've done that too. But the two biggest traps that you need to avoid, number one, would you say this if the person was sitting right in front of you?

Right.

Now, number one, from the perspective of some people just are online tough guys. It's easy when you're behind a keyboard and you're home and you're anonymous.

They're called trolls.

Right. The other thing though is not everybody is provocateur in that sense. Some are, but when you're having a conversation with somebody, you're also looking at body language and facial expressions and then the feedback that you're getting in real time from this person. I don't believe that a lot of people truly set out to be insulting or hurtful online, but I think a great deal of that that emotion comes out by accident because it's such an unemotional way to communicate, even though we have all these emoji, you know, essentially, but you don't understand because you don't get that real-time feedback. So you have to kind of keep in mind some of that when you're having these conversations that, you know, number one, the person that's saying this, if you're reading it and thinking, oh, this is hurtful to me, You have to look at these and have the best assumption. Always assume that the person who's saying this is not trying to hurt your feelings. You have to always assume the most positive motive.

And if that is the way you approach it, would you respond in a way that would hurt theirs? Because if they're not trying to hurt your feelings, again, we go back to this discourse between two elected officials. Right. One's gonna call one out and the other one has no choice because it's a, it's a political arena. So, you know, you either walk away looking like a wimp or you stand up and you, you say, sure, whatever you have to say against whatever has been called out on you. So that's where the trap is. The trap is we're believing that this person's posting something or sharing an opinion in order to fight with you. Or you could just say, this isn't about me or them really. It's really just an opinion and Walk on by. My mom used to say, if you don't happen to like me, walk on by. There's an old song. I don't know where it comes from, and it doesn't sound like that at all. But if you don't happen to like me, walk on by. Just, just pass on by, slide on by, swipe on by, do whatever. But you don't need to get into that online trap.

Yeah, I agree. And last but not least, ad hominem, right? Since we don't have Joe Cruz here to give the Latin explanation, I'll do my best. Essentially, it's the name-calling. Right? So when you have no argument, when you can't convey your feelings, your thoughts with actual words, constructive words, you just start calling people names and we resort to the school playground way of debate. When that happens, it's done. It's over. When I debate people who are like that, when I see it, somebody that's doing that sort of thing, my personal pastime is to bring out the most I possibly can from that because I know that their mind is not gonna change, but I want every person reading and commenting below or just reading this series of comments to see what the opposition to this, what this person did, how they responded. And sometimes that can make your argument better than you ever could. But just in terms of constructive, productive debate between people, it gets nowhere.

And if you don't wanna do the way that Rob does it, do it the way that Chrissanne does it, which is just I just don't get into the fray in an online forum.

Different strokes for different folks, right?

Which is a public place. And it's just, it's a waste of energy. It's a waste of resources.

But you have 5 times as many friends as I do.

Yeah, well, it's not about the friends. It's just, I don't have time to waste on that kind of stuff. I'm looking at it going, yeah, no thanks.

It's a hobby. What can I say?

Okay, I have different hobbies.

All right, well, be nice to each other out there.

Yeah, be nice to each other. There are some things we aren't supposed to talk about. We're probably going to find a way to talk about them in some way, shape, or form on this show. But now you know where we're coming from when we decide to tackle an issue.

We have to relearn the way to have these conversations. And if it means you and I talking about them, maybe agreeing, maybe disagreeing, I think that's part of the journey in all of this. That's how to make our community stronger. Because I think in the end, It's how we benefit all of us.

That's why we're elevating Polk.

Hey, hey.

So thanks for listening and make sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and don't forget to leave us a review. You can find all of our episodes at elevatepolk.com. And if there's something you want to hear about on an upcoming episode, reach out to us on Facebook at Elevate Polk.