While I was out walking this evening I crossed paths with Brother Watt. We stopped and chatted and the conversation turned to politics when he asked if I felt old having 2 kids in college. I said having 4 kids that could vote was more likely to make me feel old and he said “dare I ask?” I invited him to clarify and he asked if my kids would be voting for Trump. When I said no he reacted with the expectation that I would disagree with them voting for Harris and I assured him that I was supporting Harris too. It was a good discussion as he expressed his concerns with Harris (based on right-leaning media claims) and I offered some context for why things weren’t the way he had heard then described but then I told him that even if I liked all of Trump’s policies I couldn’t vote for him after January 6th. Of course he had more right-wing disinformation about that but he also made the comment that he thought 1/6 was peanuts compared to his concerns with the failures of the Biden/Harris administration.
I acknowledged that the biggest gap between him and me was that I weighed things differently. I told him that if Abraham Lincoln or George Washington had done January 6th I would never support them afterward either. He asked why January 6th was such a big deal breaker for me and I told him that what Trump had unarguably done that day (allowing that there are things he didn’t believe Trump had done) undercut the very foundation of our divinely inspired Constitution and were absolutely disqualifying. We had to end the discussion there as he had people arrive at his house but we parted cordially.
I felt afterward that the approach of doing minimal pushback—mostly confined to the most critical points—was the best way to be able to conduct a civil conversation about things we didn’t agree on. I think it was also crucial to not be committed to ensuring that we had to agree in order for the conversation to be successful.
I hope that he thinks on what I said and that even if he doesn’t change his mind he will feel that people can rationally support Harris. I also hope that he will remain confident that despite our different political viewpoints I still consider him a friend.
Leave a Reply