What (Not) To Say In Thanksgiving Dinner Conversations About Politics
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With the election just recently concluded, a lot of politics is expected to be passed around at Thanksgiving dinner tables all around the country. Some people are looking forward to having these conversations while others are understandably anxious. How do we steer these conversations to actually achieve something helpful instead of starting fights and making everyone uncomfortable? What kind of language do we use or, more importantly, not use during these conversations? How do we de-escalate potentially sticky situations? Bill Stierle and Tom give their take on this.
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Bill, here we are, coming up on Thanksgiving. While there may be many people who are not getting together as usual for the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, some people certainly are. I know of people that are going to travel and be with their relatives despite the pandemic and suggestions that maybe we should all stay home. There are going to be conversations as there almost always are around the Thanksgiving dinner table. Since we’re still in November 2020, a lot of those conversations are going to be around politics. I know there are a lot of people that are probably anxious about having those conversations. Other people are excited to have those conversations. There are people that are fearing those conversations because they’re volatile or they certainly can be, especially in 2020. I thought it would be a good idea for us to talk about how to have those kinds of conversations and achieve something helpful maybe to try to avoid stepping on some landmines that are going to start a fight or make everybody leave the room.
The landmines, the hand grenades, the various tragic language that people speak, the walking on eggshells, which also happens around those tables. We don’t want to talk about things that are too volatile because a cousin, brother, sister, or parent becomes escalated because of the conversation. What are the things that we can say or do when it gets heated or when we do step in one of those things, or even the person entices us to engage in the process of a conversation that we already know is going to be dangerous? We know that their beliefs are off of ours and they’re not the same as ours. What do we do? What do we say? There are ways to say things to deescalate conflict.
That’s a big part of all the things that I teach and one of the things that we do here on the show is to talk about how to upgrade our languaging skills. How do we say something different? What are some of the best things to say or not to say in discussing politics? That is a good way to start. It’s the thing to say, but it’s also the word choice in the way you’re saying that makes the difference. I feel delighted by this episode that we’re going to peel back some of those either sentences or landmines or hand grenades because both of them are available to the battlefield called the Thanksgiving dinner conversation and politics topic. What do you think are some dangerous things that could come up so we can role play and give some people a little bit of support on these things?
The conversations are going to start innocently enough, and one person won’t even realize how what they say is going to trigger something in somebody else. I can imagine somebody saying, “I hope the Donald Trump administration admits that Joe Biden has won the election so that he can get on with this transition. It’s such a critical time for our country. We’ve got to have a good transition so we don’t lose ground and we’re not vulnerable to hurting ourselves here.” I can see somebody they think that’s innocent enough to say, “Why should Donald Trump concede? He hasn’t lost the election.” Here’s where it starts. What would use say if someone said, “There are millions of votes that were cast illegally and Donald Trump won the election?” That’s going to come up.
Let’s do the millions of votes and then we’ll circle back around to the administration transition. In the millions of votes, there are two keywords that I’d like our readers to get ahold of. The first keyword is they want to be able to trust elections and the counting. The people that meet the need for integrity. Those are the primary needs when we talk about the millions of votes. It might sound like this. “You’re feeling doubtful and skeptical and it’s hard to trust the counting and the integrity of certain people in certain states. Is that correct?” Notice I’m slowing down to do a thing called the state the obvious. It’s hard to trust certain people in certain states. “What states? I don’t trust any of the states that are blue. I trust the states that are red because we won over there.”
There is a little bit of a head scratch on this, but I don’t have trust and I don’t have an intake. There are certain people that don’t have integrity and it’s hard to trust. The two words there are trust and integrity in the elections and the counting because it’s getting the human being to start claiming that trust and integrity are important to them. They might’ve been messaged away from that because if I’m following a leader, I’m listening to the news, which a lot of people push credibility onto the news and people watch types of news, not to learn something new. They watch the news to validate a currently held belief as if this shouldn’t be a Twitter quote.
I’m not watching the news that’s going to cause me to think because then I’ll feel frustrated or irritated. I’d have to consider somebody else. I’d have to stretch my point of view. I don’t want to do that. I want to watch something that engages me into things that I like. I don’t want to watch football. I want to watch baseball. I want to watch basketball. That’s not my sport. I don’t like that game. The same thing that’s happening with the news when there is no common news standard at the moment. There is opinion that shows more than there are common news standards. What happens is that we start becoming binary on our news and instead of where it needs to be, which is in sports. It doesn’t belong in the news. We need a thing called truth in the news to have a commonplace to stand from. That’s item number one, trust and integrity in the elections and counting. They will say yes to that.
If you pose the question or statement the right way, they will say yes to it. That is a key point to be emphasized here. It otherwise might get overlooked. Let’s keep pointing that out and coming back to that because someone might tend to say, “I’m guessing you have doubt and skepticism and your need for trust isn’t being met with the election system and integrity of voting and all that.” Somebody who has more of a left-leaning perspective might otherwise say, “Joe Biden won by over five million votes.” They would start throwing a fact back at them.
That’s correct. This is where facts are overrated. The pursuit of truth doesn’t get you more truth. Empathy is going to give you more truth than truth is going to give you the truth.
I know that’s mind-blowing, but that is the point. What I like about this is that it goes both ways. The person who is more of maybe a Joe Biden supporter or believes that the election was safe, I’m sure has some of their own beliefs that are problematic. If you pursue this, have a conversation with empathy and compassion, it’s going to be more productive than pursuing truth directly. This is the mistake we say journalists make all the time. They’re pursuing facts directly and they’re never going to get facts when they do.
The facts are like flies. They are easily swatted away. Even though the flies are swirling around the pile of crap that stinks bad. It’s like, “That thing you’re saying over there stinks. It’s not facts.” The facts will fly away, but the person is. It’s that metaphor I’ve used along a couple of times here. The metaphor is, some people get into a space of complaining about their life, complaining about their world, complaining about politics, complaining about their work-life, their job, how they have been in society and their life circumstances. The image is awful. It is like they’re standing neck-deep in a pile of crap and they are telling how much this pile of crap smells.
It smells, “My life smells. The party smells. I’m so angry about being here. It smells.” You’re standing there listening to them and going like, “What? Come out of there. We’ll hose you off. We’ll get you some new stuff over here. We’ll clean you up. We know it smells over there, but come over here.” They go, “You don’t understand how much it smells.” “Come on out.” “It smells. Let me tell you about the time that I heard this and this thing here and this person here. I heard Glenn Beck said this and so-and-so said that. Rachel Maddow said this.” It doesn’t matter what pile of crap they’re in. They’re still a head-neck in the pile of crap. They say, “Why aren’t you coming out of the pile of crap?” Here’s the sentence, “At least it’s warm.” Our beliefs and biases are warm. They keep us warm at night. We wake up with them. We believe them from the start of our day. It’s not helpful, but it’s warm.
It’s a cozy safe space for our beliefs. Is that right?
“I can rant from this place that I’m in that is smelling and I’m telling you how much it smells.” It’s the pile of shit metaphor. They’re up to their neck. Even if you empathize or when you empathize with the million votes being cast or thrown away or illegal, whatever framing that they’re trying to get the brain to stick and take up, and you talk about how truth and integrity are important to the person because that’s what’s being activated. They’ll then follow that yes up with, “Yes, and it’s not fair. They shouldn’t be that way.” The next empathy sentence is, “You would like fairness to make sure that each vote is counted.” What the Governor of Georgia did was the best thing ever, “We are recounting all of the votes.”
Was that the Governor of Georgia or the Secretary of State that did that? They are both Republicans. They said, “We’re recounting.”
“We are recounting all of the Donald Trump votes. We are not doing that.” When it came back to Joe Biden, it’s rut row because now we have a state that is saying and moving down the path of certification of their votes going like, “This is one state that you cannot argue with because we have recounted this thing.” They spent the money to do it or whatever it took to recount it.
You then hear these attacks that are coming from the right that says, “Even though the votes have been counted and Joe Biden got more, many were cast by dead people.” Have you heard about the whole Tucker Carlson thing? He made a big deal. To his credit, Tucker Carlson, I believe has apologized when seen that this was incorrect at the end of the day. He said, “Here’s this person, that’s World War II veteran, who voted in this election. He’s been dead for ten years.” When the media then went and investigated, they found it was his wife that voted. Her name listed on the ballot is Mrs. whatever his name is.
It is a very old past generation way of identifying yourself as not your own name as a woman, but the Mrs. whatever his name is, which is perfectly legal. She said, “No, I voted for Joe Biden. I’m always voting against Donald Trump.” In any case, here it is that you have actual proof that this vote was legally cast. While that fact may have seen the light of day and been helpful in some ways, in other ways, it’s still not helpful. If we’re arguing facts at the dinner table at Thanksgiving, this is not going to end up in a good place for anybody, is it?
You’re going to feel exasperated. You’re going to feel disheartened and even helpless about the thought it’s not going to land up in a great place. Most people think that it doesn’t land in a great place. The thing I like to coach people on with language is that we’re trying to get the thought or the idea to move through not to get scared when it’s about ready to walk up to the wall. Get around the wall, walk through the wall and use empathy to get around it. The brain is going to want to validate their version of facts and truth. The brain’s going to want to do that, but the people that are in opposition know what’s at stake, which is connection.
Are we going to have a deeper level of connection and acceptance beyond politics? Are we going to have a deeper level of connection beyond our different points of view? Are we going to put the need for the family ahead of these other values that we hold? When we look at it that way, then you’re going to walk up to the wall and then walk around the wall. It sounds like this, “You would like some truth around people that have died voting and you heard somebody said that that’s an issue. I feel curious about how you and I are going to discuss these things when you and I are not counting the ballots and come to a solution on this. I’m going to extend trust to the ballot counter. It sounds like you’re not extending trust to the ballot counter in and I can appreciate that because unless you would like to see it for yourself, and that’s what truth looks like to you. Truth looks like seeing it yourself.”
The person that says, “Yes, I’m glad you’re my family member,” because everybody else is trying to beat him with a stick, “How can you think that way? What’s wrong with you?” Everybody’s trying to rip their head off and you’re going like, “You heard this thing about dead people and the truth to you looks like that. You don’t have the truth. I don’t have the truth. We both have hearsay. That stinks for both of us. I’m glad we’re able to talk through it and still eat turkey together.” Get around the damn wall. “I’m glad we could talk about it and it is an issue because when people say things, we take things seriously. We take things that have value to us. We want to get the things that are valuable and for him, the vote is valuable. His vote, his expression and his being heard are important to him.” You can see how all that works and your brain swimming now.
It’s interesting that there is a similarity here in what we’re talking about with an article that came out in The Atlantic. There are a lot of similarities to the article that is titled How We Got Trump Voters to Change Their Mind: Our persuasion rate is much higher than that of traditional electioneering efforts. It’s not a very long article. It’s a quick read, but what they’re talking about, the author of this and people went and spoke with Donald Trump voters, instead of throwing facts at them, they gave them empathy. What they did is just got them to think a little bit more about it. They didn’t try to change their mind. They didn’t try to get them to commit to voting for Joe Biden but often, they did after they give them some empathy and had a safe discussion.
What’s illuminating about this article is what’s hard for a lot of us to do is if you want to get people to expand their minds to see things differently, you’ve got to meet them where they are. Give them empathy and have a discussion that has no predetermined or finite conclusion. You can’t be going for admission of anything. You can’t be going for, “You realize I’m right and you’re wrong.” You have to have a conversation. Lower the temperature by giving empathy and compassion to them. You then end up having conversations that are much more pleasant and safe but might get people to open their eyes, their minds and consider something different than their belief structure would keep them locked in.
It’s gently building a relationship with a person. This is the same from left to right as it is from right to left. If I’m trying to build a connection and if I’m looking to have a relationship with somebody, they’re going to tend to want to hang around me. It’s not adversarial because you start doing a healthy back and forth with the person. You have the ability to connect authentically. It is a lot tougher now with COVID and all of us still meeting our need for health and safety by not connecting the way that we used to in the past. Yet it’s taking a moment or two to be able to participate in the other person’s life and challenges and appreciate their faith or examining politics in a healthy way of looking at what is their short-term worldview versus their long-term worldview.
Sometimes the short-term worldview is, “I need to check now,” and the long-term worldview is, “I’ll be happy to create a stable economy as soon as I get a check now.” Their issue is we want to resonate with them of where they are and empathy can get us there. For those of you who might be reading this for the first time, the thing that we talk about is how do you create empathy when we, as human being, create a feeling word and hook it to a need word? The experience of empathy shows up and the person gets the energetic change that we’re talking about fairness, integrity or consideration from their viewpoint and that creates a safer and deeper conversation.
It goes better. You are not forcing your point of view down in anybody’s throat and that can make a big difference too. That is one of the biggest takeaways. Tom, when you think about Thanksgiving dinner or different people that you might know that struggle with some of these questions or even things that you’ve heard over the news media, there are some pretty challenging points of view are out there that are can be hard to discuss. Maybe we can go over some safe ways to talk about those. It’s tough to get things to become safer in communication. There are different things that show up.
The things that would be difficult for me to deal with is if one of my right-wing conservative uncles comes up and says, “Joe Biden has been given so much money from China and Ukraine. They start going down one of these paths. He is so corrupt.” I’m not making this up. I’ve got one of these uncles for real. I’m like, “Are you kidding me?” That’s my feeling in my head that I wouldn’t say out loud, but they have this belief that he is a career politician for almost 50 years and everybody is in his pocket and he’s corrupt. I don’t know how to combat that easily.
Usually, step number one is to make it state the obvious, which is what you heard the person say. You would like me to hear that Joe Biden receives money from China. You like me to hear that Joe Biden receives money from Ukraine. Did I hear that correctly?
He would have to say yes.
All of a sudden, at least I’m having a bridge sentence, “I’m saying it back to you and I’m going to stay at a non-judgment because quite frankly, I don’t know what the truth is. I can have some fantasy, a belief.” We have most certainly had people in our lives present themselves one way and then years later, you’re going to like, “Really?” That celebrity was that kind of person. I thought they were this kind of person because of their character on TV and they weren’t that kind of person. Whatever the illusion is, we bought into it. That the musician was this and that musician did that. The answer is, “Yes, they did. They were like that.” We don’t know what the truth is. Stating back the obvious or what their version of the truth is the healthiest first step.
Number two, you would like integrity and fairness with Joe Biden. You would like him to have the same level of integrity that Donald Trump does. You tend to trust Donald Trump versus trust Joe Biden. Is that correct? He’s got to say yes. If I stay out of judgment, the humor on your side laugh, you’re going like, “If you want to do apples to apples, then I’m going to do apples and apples. Is that what you want to do? Do you want to talk about he’s a bad apple? I don’t want to talk about my bad apple, but I’ll talk about that person being a bad apple because someone told me that he was a bad apple. I have a belief that a career politician must be a bad apple. All of us are clear that certain politicians on both sides of the aisle have their bad apples in those groups.
They do. They get elected and they’re in there. They do a term and they realized no one wants to work with them. There are certain people that will work with them, but they can’t get enough steam and they have a hard time. That’s why there are only so many tea parties people left in Congress. There have been all kinds of turnover because those people are going, “I got this job. I thought it was going to change something. I came here and it is nothing that I thought I was running for or going to be able to do. Lawmaking is hard because you’ve got to get a bunch of people to agree on what’s the best-written part of the law, not just what one person’s view of the law is. It is difficult because different people believe different things are going to be helpful.
This Thanksgiving, let us remind ourselves of the things that unite us more than the things that have been dividing us.
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Before I was saying, you don’t want to try to have this gotcha moment or get somebody to admit something because that’s not going to be helpful. The facts pursuing truth is not going to reveal the truth, but you did come to say, “You would like to see more integrity in Joe Biden that is equivalent to the integrity that Donald Trump has.” You put one next to the other for the person to think about and compare.
That’s correct. If I stay in non-judgment because I don’t know the level of integrity that Joe Biden has. I don’t know what the terrible things that he’s done over the years. He was for the state of Delaware. The things he did for the banks is a little bit of an eye roll. It’s like, “You let the banks have all that money at the expense of people? That’s not a good thing.” There are soft spots that he has from the decisions that he made in the past because he was representing those people. It doesn’t mean Donald Trump doesn’t have his list of people that are joyous, delighted, and energized about him being in there because they are of the statue or ability to receive the generosity that he provides to them.
Staying out of criticism, defensiveness, contempt and withdrawal, those sand traps is the best description. It’s quicksand. It’s a conversation that’s not winnable. Criticism and defensiveness, try to avoid those. Try to be empathetic instead of using those. Contempt, this relative makes me sick. Withdraw doesn’t help, so leave the room. You can leave the room if the person’s angry or furious and say, “You’re angry and furious and you want me to hear from you. I need to take a break from this conversation so I can come back and be loving and compassionate because this is a family event, right? I don’t want to turn this into a rally or turn this into a shouting match of political thing. This is where our need for family and connection now, not doing the other thing. We’re not going to end. The discussion is interesting, but it’s not going to help us with family and connection right now.”
That’s the way to get out of a heated discussion is that return to the discussion of family and connection. Another way to make to turn things from getting heated is to revert to storytelling about what has happened in the past within your family relatives that are past, different to vacations where funny things happened on it, different experiences that show up that you say, “I’m going to tell the story about scuba diving or something that I did over the summer. We went to this event and I hope that we can go back to do the concerts again soon. There are to be people wearing masks there, but at least we’re going to be able to share and be safe and get the numbers where it’s safer because we want to be mindful of the new disease that’s in our environment.” There’s going to be a time when the rate is going to be 50% or 60% of the people in the nation in the US will be infected. I feel sad to even say it, but the numbers are going in that direction.
It’s going in the wrong direction. That’s a whole other subject maybe for another episode.
Making it safe to talk about Thanksgiving is to avoid the criticisms, the defensiveness, the experience of the contempt or the willingness to withdraw and then it re-engaged and remind everybody that we’re here to connect. We’re here to meet the need for family. We’re here to share a meal and tell stories.
The big takeaway I’m taking from this is that pursuit of the facts is not going to be helpful. Trying to achieve some predetermined goal with the relative of getting them to admit they see things differently is not going to be helpful. Bringing empathy and compassion will in the right way get them to think about it on their own anyway to lower the temperature and may bring them closer to the truth than anything else you could do. That’s the hard part because you have to stay away from the flame. You can’t be the moth that seizes the opportunity for a gotcha moment and goes after it and say, “A-ha.” That’s not going to well and be helpful.
The inclusion is what’s going to help us through it, which is somebody says, “Something in a heated discussion, generalize it and agree with it.” “That’s a challenge that we’re all facing together. I’m not sure how we’re going to get through this issue because we aren’t.”
Hopefully, we can all be reminded of the things that unite us more than the things that have been dividing us. I think that would be very hard.
That’s right. We’ve got to lean on the United States. The States is about the collaboration between different states, different governors, different people in different industries, the different professional relationships, whether the legal profession, steps up and starts restoring trust and integrity with people around them. Whether it’s the medical people get trust and integrity to come back with a vaccine and the narrative around the vaccine. How to make science safer for people to understand and gets some clear messages. There are all kinds of complexity, and it scares people because they can’t understand it.
Truth and messaging is something that we can take a look at in the various different professions. I didn’t even think about it until this moment, but all the professions have got to stand up and start grabbing ground and claiming space. This is the way the law works. There’s not a variance here. If we get enough people to stand united around that and empathy with the people that don’t, then at least we can move the needle a little bit towards the truth.
Bill, that sounds great. Thanks so much.
Thanks, Tom. Thanks, everybody, for reading.
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