We had an open show Monday, and to my surprise, over 50 showed up for the Zoom call. I had no agenda or idea of how the conversation would unfold. Still, when I spotted Bill Sniffin, a former Iowan, who used to run newspapers in Wyoming, I called on him to start the conversation because he voted for Donald Trump.
He’s the guy, Richard, my husband, apologized to Liz Cheney about when she appeared at Drake University last year, because he helped mentor Bill as a young reporter for an Iowa newspaper. Sniffin’s news organization did not endorse Cheney for re-election. She lost her primary because of the role she held in leading the congressional investigation into the January 6th attempted coup.
So, here we were, to my surprise, with an open show, a Trump-voting guy from Wyoming, and a bunch of furious, bereft, heartbroken readers. What could go wrong, right?
And, it turned into an example of what will be playing out throughout the country and world, now that Donald Trump is president-elect.
First, gloating will not land well. Nor will saying things like: this election means that people in the country just said enough to all the ‘woke nonsense.’
Bill, who ran newspapers in Wyoming, says he spends time in Dallas and Las Vegas, where he is in the demographic minority, and he ‘doesn’t see racism.’
Oh boy.
Where do we go from that starting point? Probably not pointing out that in spite of local GOP officials saying it was not true, Trump said repeatedly that the hardworking Haitian immigrants of a small town in Ohio were eating neighbors dogs and cats. It was not true, by any account, including the woman who started the rumor in the first place. She regrets her role in the furor it created.
Not ‘seeing racism’ does not mean it wasn’t a factor in this race.
Had Bill and I been alone on a call, without 49 others seething from the election results, we might have been better able to talk through some of these things, but his comments were triggering for many.
This is a hunch, but my guess is the Trump divide will cause longstanding holiday traditions of family Thanksgiving gatherings to look very different.
In my hubris, I thought we had an opportunity to turn the conversation into a template for civil and constructive conversation with those who have political disagreements. Alas. It’s probably just as well that Bill could only be on the call with us briefly because he faced 49 others who did not share his point of view or sense of humor about the election. Not only is it too soon to laugh, but for most of us, the results on Tuesday will never be a laughing matter.
Still, I’d like to think, given time, we could hear one another. But, that is naive, especially when a Facebook ‘friend’ posted a claim that VP Harris was a child sex-trafficker. WTF.
We all have people in our lives with whom we disagree. Families are split, relationships have been severed. Is it possible to find harmony in a dissonant world?
, one of the smartest, most informed political analysts I know, was up next on the call. She refuted what Bill said step by step, but I could sense her displeasure in doing so.In a follow-up email, Belin told me she has decided her role is not to try to persuade people on the other side, but to ‘document the atrocities.’
And, she will. If you do not currently subscribe to her column, I encourage you to do so.
Take a listen to the podcast. We had a pastor in Dewitt who has co-authored a book about having civilized conversations. We had a Democratic activist from ruby-red Kossuth County. And another from Burlington who was the first to host one of my community potlucks. Another reader joined from Union County who was in tears because her liberal friends judge her for being in a relationship with a Trump supporter.
My takeaway from the call is that there is a simmering rage in this country that I hope turns into constructive action.
And yet I feel like I did as a kid when I was losing a board game and there was no way out except to quit or wait until I was annihilated.
Alas, this is not a game. Or a drill. Or a test.
I don’t have answers, other than a truism I learned in my days as a Vistage chair: Seek first to understand then to be understood. Which seems futile.
In the call on Monday, I tried but failed to have a conversation about how we go forward.
I said to Richard last night, I think I need to see a therapist. Perched relatively comfortably on the ninth floor of a condo building overlooking a golf course, I am shattered by guilt over what is to come. For our children, grandchildren, the planet, the world.
Even if Bill Sniffin and I can have a cordial, albeit discordant discussion about politics, what’s the point?
What are you thinking? Feeling? Doing?
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