Month: April 2017

How To: Have A Civil Conversation

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As I was composing last week’s post about how we’re closer in purpose than it appears in our polarized time, I realized that I was also setting out (incomplete) guidelines on how to engage civilly. So it made a lot of sense to follow up with a How-To on not devolving immediately into screaming matches over politics, whether that’s online or at the family reunion this summer.

Warning: if you’re the kind of person who holds grudges, please do not start or engage in political arguments. This advice is only useful if you can…

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Myth Smack: We’re Polarized

It sounds counterintuitive to say that we’re not polarized as a nation. We see each other as almost separate countries.

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There are people from every state who say they are willing to tear apart their communities and save the “good ones” from the devastation, whether that’s snarky liberals on a blog or gun-toting secessionists in the Mountain West. It seems like we can never ever agree on things, and even when we do express some consensus, we’re all suspicious of the others’ motives.

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Myth Smack: Our Votes Don’t Matter

It cannot be stressed enough: voting matters. Voting matters a lot. It’s one of the most important and central acts of our government. Citizenship cannot exist without it. And yes, while it will take other, more consistent actions to bring your worldview to full fruition, almost nothing you can try to accomplish through politics will happen without casting a ballot.

Yet the myth persists among too many people that voting doesn’t matter.

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How To: Trust A Politician

Wait, please hear me out! Trust feels precious enough that none of us really wants to spare any for politics, let alone anyone who can’t go three words without pandering. But the bad news is that our political system runs on trust, so we’ll all have to find some way to build it for the people we hire to write and manage the rules of society.

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