Be Braver
I gave and give thanks for many things. Prominently among them nowadays are people and organizations striving to advance the cause of decency and sense in our social and political lives. It is difficult to overstate how important this is in our fraught times.
Sarah Longwell wears many hats. To name just two, she is a founder and the publisher of The Bulwark and host of The Focus Group podcast. During her podcast, Longwell plays excerpts from the focus groups she conducts and discusses them and current events with a fellow thought leader.
This past Thanksgiving, Longwell dropped her latest podcast episode (YouTube version here) titled “Our Better Angels.” Her discussant was legendary journalist Judy Woodruff.
Below is how Longwell introduced the episode:
[T]his week we are helping you prepare for the holiday season. We are dropping this show a little bit early, so as you are prepping for or recovering from your Thanksgiving holiday, you can also enjoy the political struggles of a bunch of strangers who also are trying to figure out how to talk to their families and loved ones about politics. Now, we've heard about these kinds of interpersonal squabbles for years across our various focus groups. So hopefully after the show, you'll find you are not alone this time of year if it has been hard for you to talk about politics around the holiday table. My guest and I have done some focus groups together over the past few months and heard a lot about how divided the country is right now. Judy Woodruff is the former anchor of the PBS NewsHour and is currently a senior correspondent who also hosts a recurring segment talking about these very themes, America at a Crossroads. Judy, thank you so much for being here.
In addition to excerpts from the podcast’s focus groups, Longwell and Woodruff discussed excerpts from two that Woodruff conducted for America at a Crossroads: one from this past September featuring Pennsylvania Democrats and the other from July featuring Iowa Republicans. The podcast included audio from a third America at a Crossroads episode, also from July and featuring Ohio Democrats and Republicans as well as leaders from Braver Angels.
As a leader of my local chapter (the Colorado Southern Front Range Alliance), I have a special affinity for Braver Angels. I profiled the organization in my very first Decency and Sense essay and have mentioned it twice since (here and here). Dedicated to “restoring trust, respect and goodwill in American politics,” Braver Angels engages people who hold disparate worldviews and political predispositions in thoughtful, respectful dialogue. I believe that such encounters among people who are inherently decent and sensible are a vital element of a strategy to defeat “conflict entrepreneurs” who sow division, often with the goal of advancing authoritarianism.
Consider this passage from Longwell's conversation with Woodruff:
JUDY WOODRUFF
[W]hat we heard from the Braver Angels folks, this was a group that Braver Angels knew about, they identified them, they identified them as people who have wanted to try to bridge the divide. They've expressed an interest in sitting down and having conversations, sometimes tough conversations, with people who disagree with them. So we were talking to people who had already raised their hand and said, “Okay, I don't wanna be forever way on the left or way on the right. I wanna try to relate to people who disagree with me.” It gave me hope. I think it has to give all of us hope. But it is one person or one group at a time. And it's gonna take a long time, I think, for those programs to develop critical mass, if you will.
I hope I'm wrong. And I know what they hope, certainly, is that if they can start to seed this kind of thing in communities around the country, that other people will hear about it, they'll pick up on it, it'll get more media attention, and people will recognize that there are real serious, meaningful efforts out there to get people to just to listen. In fact, there's one group called Listen First. I think that maybe you've heard of them. They're all about, as the name says, you know, listening, because that's not what we're doing anymore. I mean, you've listened to some of the same people I have, Sarah, and I, and some of them, I don't think they want to listen. I mean, we still have some very strong views out there on the part of Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, who absolutely reject the premise that the other person is saying, whether they're a family member or not, and how, whether Braver Angels or Common Ground, there are these wonderful groups I've been in contact with, we've talked to them about what they're doing, how are they gonna get people to overcome that? It's hard work. It's almost one person, one family at a time.
SARAH LONGWELL
Yeah, I mean, it is hard to figure out how to scale what is supposed to be kind of like our ability to just interact with each other normally. The fact that you programmatically need to figure out how to be like, how do we have people talk to each other effectively, have differing political views, sort of feels like we've already lost because you have to fund organizations to do it versus this just being a natural way that we engage with each other civically and civilly that allows us to exist.
I want to go back actually, cause you brought this up and I was trying to rush to the next question, but I want to take a second on it, which is how sad it is. Sometimes people ask me, they're just like, oh, how can you listen to these people or whatever. One of the things that I don't think comes through when you're just listening to the clips, right? The clips is, all right, this is what people said, fine. But the crushing loneliness that you see from people, the sadness that you see when they talk about losing these relationships, the way that they are so dug in tribally and in a partisan way that allow them to relinquish their relationships with people that clearly mean a lot to them. You were talking about the media early, but just like there's so many conflict entrepreneurs out there that are willing to jump into those cracks and widen them, to drive wedges into them, to pour poison in people's ears in a way that I watch people.
And, like, there was this guy one time I remember and he was talking about how his granddaughter had canceled him. He was just like, “She's canceled me for things that he said.” And the things that he said sounded not great about immigrants, I would say. I'm not sure I would have pursued a second conversation with this guy either. He was using this terminology canceled so that he could be part of the tribe for whom being canceled is a kind of cultural signifier. But really, the guy was sad his grandkid doesn't talk to him anymore. You know? I don't know what to say other than to acknowledge it, but I think the humanity of it all is real and I find myself sort of disliking people less as I do these and more feeling very angry at the forces that exacerbate the pain and loneliness that is part of the human condition and turn it in such a negative way.
Take in this exchange toward the end of the podcast:
SARAH LONGWELL
So you do hear a lot of people when they kind of get the better angels of their nature kick in, they'll tell you like, “Oh, I've got a friend and like they're a good person” or they talk about trying to make their relationships work. And I guess as we head into the holiday holidays, all the different holidays. What do they do during the holidays when they're with the people that they love? Are you an advocate of no politics at the Thanksgiving table to keep the peace? Or do you think we just have to find a better way to talk about politics with each other?
JUDY WOODRUFF
Well, as a reporter for many, many years, I always tried to stay right as an observer of many of these conversations. And in my extended family, both my husband, who's a journalist, and my own, I've seen an evolution of views. I think I'm an advocate of play it by ear because if you can have some of these conversations about what's going on in the world, great. If you can do that without getting your back up, I mean, without people getting angry or taking it personally, I think that's great. But if it becomes painful, if people are saying things that are hurtful to each other, I don't think that's healthy. And I think you put those conversations off and you try to change the subject. So I think every family has to figure out for themselves, you know, what the parameters are. I think, because the last thing you want to do when you finally get everybody together and, you know, somebody's driven hundreds of miles to grandmother's house or Aunt Mabel's house to get there and then spend the whole time, you know, huffing and puffing and angry. That's not what we want. But all the more reason why we need to think about ways to get through this. And as you and I said earlier, maybe it's by focusing on things that matter, but that aren't so political.
As I'm saying that, Sarah, look, these are issues that matter, the things that people disagree over today. They matter. Immigration, what we do about it as a country, that matters. How much we spend on healthcare, and for whom, that matters. Housing, what we do about Israel and Hamas, all those things matter. And yet look how divided we are. So if there's a way we can say what we think and understand that it's okay to have a different view and still love the person who has that different view, that's okay. But if we start to personalize it so much that we assume that other person is a bad person because they hold that view, that's what I think has happened more recently. And that's what I think is really hurting us.
SARAH LONGWELL
Yeah, and it's hard because the stakes are really high on a lot of these things. Like if you think that Trump is an existential threat to democracy, and I do, then it's tough when you encounter people who sort of support him and think it's all kind of funny, think it's all a little bit of a joke. I think that if you're somebody who is deeply pro-life and you think that Democrats are actually murdering babies. Sometimes I think it's actually a wonder that we don't just dissolve into civil war altogether. But thank God for pluralism and for at least...There's still enough of the sort of live and let live democratic small D values in there that I think it's not all hopeless yet.
But I want to say two things just before we wrap. One is, you know, when it comes to people and how this sort of tough polarization, I always talk about there's this old parable about the two wolves inside of you. Everybody, it's like an Indian spiritual. It's like a little kid talking to his grandfather saying, “I've got greed and avarice and a whole bunch of bad things on one hand. And I've also got love. light and decency on the other and they feel like two wolves fighting inside of me, my good impulses and my bad impulses. Which one's going to win?” The grandfather says, “The one that you feed.” The reason that I really put these things at the feet of the conflict entrepreneurs and the politicians is because I believe they're feeding the worst inside of us and I see a lot of the good stuff that exists in people. What I think is going to get us out of this actually is at least in part having leaders that are speaking to the good parts of us and are trying to feed those good parts. I think that the work that you do really does feed the good part, and so I really appreciate it.
This theme of constructive conversation among people with differing outlooks is very resonant with the White Flag podcast that the former Tea Party member of Congress and talk radio host Joe Walsh hosts. Notably, he has named his enterprise The Bravery Project and concludes most episodes of his podcast with the encouragement to “be brave.” In the introductory audio for every episode, Walsh speaks the following words:
This is about defending democracy. This is no longer Democrats vs Republicans. What do you want your kids to believe in? There must be give and take. This is White Flag with Joe Walsh.
On the day after Thanksgiving, Walsh dropped an episode (YouTube video version here) in which he took on the role of interviewee, rather than interviewer. Here is a bit from the beginning of the conversation:
JOE WALSH
We're going to do something different this week. And I'm looking forward to this. A gentleman who I've become friends with, Chuck Kelo. Dr. Chuck Kelo – he's a physician, I want to throw that in – is going to, I don't know what he's going to do, but he's going to interview me. I spend my weeks on this podcast generally interviewing and having a conversation with someone. I'm out there all the time, but I don't talk about myself much. So we're just going to try this. And Chuck has become a friend, concerned citizen of this country, and I know getting to know him how much he cares about this country. So with that, my friend, I'm done. It's yours. Hello.
CHUCK KELO
Well, thank you, Joe. What a pleasure to have the opportunity to interview you. I've been an ardent listener for probably two years listening to just about every episode. I really have learned just a tremendous amount from the podcast and then from our direct engagement with each other. And so I'm excited about helping the listeners getting to understand you a little bit. Your background, how you got to where you are, and what your thinking is for today, including some of your positions, exploring some of that. So I totally appreciate your approach in general. It is incredibly respectful in terms of how you engage with people, and you certainly evolve towards that. It's genuine, it's inquisitive, it's open-minded. The depth of your thinking and exploration are just impressive. So this Thanksgiving week, Joe, I'm thankful for you and I really appreciate the model that you've built for respectful dialogue.
I concur in Dr. Kelo’s assessment of the very respectful way in which Walsh engages with his interview subjects, who are always individuals whose outlook is very different from his own. Sometimes he interviews people on the left (he recently interviewed the very progressive Joan Walsh, to whom he playfully referred as his sister) and other times he has interviewed people on the authoritarian right – people who in Walsh’s assessment and mine represent a danger to the country. In all instances, he engages in a civil manner with the goal of reaching understanding, not necessarily agreement.
All four of these podcast participants – Sarah Longwell, Judy Woodruff, Joe Walsh, and Chuck Kelo – believe in figuring out, as Longwell put it in a passage quoted above, “how do we have people talk to each other effectively.”
This is a topic to which I dedicated an essay this past June. In it I promoted the Transcendental Politics Handbook, to which I made some editorial contributions.
There are roles for all of us to play in the struggle to preserve our liberal democracy. Let’s bravely get on with it.