This is America
The death of moral victories
The President of the United States warned a group of Evangelical leaders yesterday that our political divide will result in violence against them, specifically from Antifa.
“It’s not a question of like or dislike, it’s a question that they will overturn everything that we’ve done and they will do it quickly and violently. And violently. There is violence. When you look at Antifa — these are violent people,”
This rhetoric should not be a surprise — as a matter of fact, this is normal. By definition, the President is right; the specific division of the anti-fascism movement he is referring to believes in the idea of direct action, which includes both violent and non-violent tactics to fight fascism, racism, and right-wing extremism (that last one is ironic).
That last part is key — if he is to be correct about the violence, he must also be correct as to the reason for the violence (again, fascism, racism, and right-wing extremism). He is hoping that the Evangelical base will fall under one or more of those categories (wrongly, I should add) and leverage the perceived threat against them to promote votes. His political strategy is founded on fear and conformity; a brilliant strategy that requires him to be the loudest person in any room and stay on-message with his opinions.
John McCain (ugh, not another fucking John McCain eulogy) died this weekend after a hard-fought battle with brain cancer. The man was flawed, once voting against making MLK Day a national holiday among other votes against Civil Rights legislation. Yet, he admitted to his mistake later in his life and corrected course in more recent legislative challenges by voting against his political base for the benefit of the larger population.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS8K90zFgUE[/embed]
While his shortcomings may be unforgivable to some, his ability to recognize fact from opinion was extremely important in the way our country conducted politics. He stood by the truth and this cost him every attempt at winning the presidency. He was a case study in American values and how we make decisions as a population.
As a nation, we prefer comfort over harsh truths. We rather hear that everything is fine and that we are an exceptional people instead of identifying our shortcomings and proactively fixing them. We are carried by the exceptional minority of our nation, even when we do our best to undermine them. We follow the opinions that conform to our beliefs and reject all else, facts be damned.
This conformity is dangerous; conformity is easy to exploit and I say this as someone that gets paid to exploit these vulnerabilities (we call it marketing + advertising). If we are to ever grow as a nation we must start accepting that we are often wrong; and at minimum hearing dissenting opinions without automatically dismissing them.
Radical Candor is one of the hottest hashtags in the start-up world but it has quickly evolved for me and how I practice it. I find that the most important element of RC is to remain open to the idea that there are no absolutes but rather a collective of opinions and feedback that you must critically analyze to determine weight and validity against your own position. It’s being open to the idea that your opinion isn’t the most important, and in fact, no opinion is.
Let go of righteousness and have a conversation with someone that you disagree with. Let them speak and challenge them to provide substantial evidence for their arguments. Be ready to do the same. Repeat many more times remembering to keep an open mind and don’t dismiss anyone until you have been presented with all the evidence for their position. Bonus points if you can reject your own biases and see this evidence through the lens of the person you’re disagreeing with (not for the faint of heart).
We live in a crazy world and that craziness is exacerbated by our refusal to think critically as is evident in our latest geopolitical drama. While election tampering isn’t new (as a matter of fact, we’re pretty good at it) the internet is making the propaganda machine (or fake news if you bougie) significantly easier to maneuver in spreading dangerous misinformation. History teaches us that this shit is only going to get harder (read the links above for fucks sake).
We can’t change our country but we can change ourselves. Maybe that’s a good enough start in getting our collective heads out of our ass.