Sectional Healing 10/7: Talking At vs. Talking With...
This newsletter has seen hell in Reno.
SUBSCRIBER SECTION
Happy October, everyone. The republic may be crumbling BUT WE GOT THAT PUMPKIN SPICE UP IN HERRRRRRRRRE. After all is said and all is done*, when we look back on this year, the other footprints in the sand may very will be sourdough, pumpkin spice, and Tik Tok.
(FootNOTE: Hamilton Reference)
As you may or may not know, Sectional Healing is now a multi-tier situation. The first tier is all y’all here and receiving this email, which you get monthly as well as a smattering of some other posts.
The second tier, THE COOL TIER IF I MAY, includes many grand and wonderful perks, which I will highlight below in showcasing what subscribers received throughout the month of September.
Chapter 1 of my fiction novel, Devil Town, is out now. (Click here to read a preview…)
A post where subscribers helped me name and build an upcoming supporting character for Devil Town.
An episode of my subscriber only podcast, Five On It, where I reviewed Tenet.
One, two, three, and four subscriber only editions of this here newsletter.
As always, if you are a free subscriber and want to bump up to a supporter of Sectional Healing, hit the button below and let’s get this party started.
PICTURE SECTION
When you see it, YOU REALLY SEE IT.
WRITE SECTION
RECONSIDER: Politics
Historically, as a member of the vast and expansive internets, I’ve made a conscious decision to mostly avoid talking about politics. This is primarily because I don’t consider myself particularly well-rounded in understanding the complicated underpinnings comprising our political system.
My second favorite Avett Brothers lyric goes “Ain’t it like most people / I’m no different / they love to talk on things they don’t know about,” and as much as I can, I try to not be guilty of such a sin.
Also, I don’t really have a solution for how to improve politics beyond advocating for term limits and the very chill expectation that politicians shouldn’t be able to enrich themselves by leveraging public office.
But mostly, I avoid talking about politics because people don’t like it when you talk about politics, which is to say, people don’t like it when you don’t affirm their politics. Which, on a certain level, I understand.
To be a person in the world who talks about pop culture, sports, Survivor, and the Bible and then suddenly be like, “Hi, hello. I’ve gathered you all here today to now talk about FILIBUSTERS AND GERRYMANDERING MUAHAHAHAHAHA,” is undoubtedly a severe and vaguely catfishy turn.
On the flipside though, don’t we all contain multitudes? Am I not allowed to ponder Surrender Cobras just as much as social security?
And just as an aside, to only have toleration for people that do the thing you want them to do or say the things you want them to say, that’s a specific kind of self-obsessed idiocy. You don’t have to inundate yourself with spicy takes from the OTHER SIDE, but how fragile is your worldview that you can ONLY abide people gratuitously reconfirming it?
The strange thing though is that as much as I want to avoid politics, the unintended consequences and influence of politics has led to an inescapable pervasiveness that is ABSOLUTELY SUFFOCATING. To exist right now is to feel like you are in one of those scenes from the movies where a character is trying to swim out of an underwater cave and they are desperately looking for an air pocket of oxygen for relief, lest they drown.
To brazenly mix metaphors, the omnipresence of politics in our life right now feels like the worst kind of hangnail, one that you keep pulling, hoping that it will eventually tear free, but instead, it just keeps shredding itself until only the pulpy rawness of our collective psyches remain.
SO WHAT DO WE DO? Ignore it and hope it will eventually go away or subside post election?
Or do we lean in and become polling experts and policy wonks* who never shut up about polling, policies, and POTUS?
(FootNOTE: I don’t actually know what they word ‘wonk’ means, but I’ve always wanted to use it in a sentence so just freaking be cool, ok?
Full disclosure: the last thing I want to do is be yet another digital demagogue on the internet shrieking into the void about what you should and should not do politically. Truly, at this moment, with less than a month to go, I honestly just don’t think there is anything I could say that would make you change your mind on who you are voting for and vice versa. Even more, I don’t think *I* should be trying to change *your* mind.
In this way, I sometimes wonder if politics has entered into a weirdly adjacent evangelical sphere, where we all expect everyone to align uniformly with our beliefs and if they don’t, we assume that ONLY perdition and sulfur awaits them.
And now here within this revelation, I do believe that I’ve had an epiphany:
I think the Internet, social media, and cable news has trained us to become very good at talking AT each other, but woefully inept at talking WITH each other.
Hear me out.
When you talk with someone, you listen. You empathize. You emotionally collaborate because to do otherwise is a form of relational monstrosity. You don’t have to agree, but you do have to humanize someone to talk with and listen to them.
Talking at someone is entirely different though. You are not required to listen, you are encouraged to not empathize and the entire process is predicated on conflict over collaboration. It all descends into a performative regurgitation of rehearsed rhetoric that accomplishes nothing except for pushing us further away from each other.
The reason I think we’ve all gotten so used to talking at each other is because we’ve been trained by the internet to live our lives like some kind of solo performance, and even more so during this pandemic / quarantine.
The binary of “with me / against me” has been around since long before the internet, but all these variables (the pandemic, politics, cable news, social media, disinformation etc etc etc) are conspiring to make this cultural moment a hellscape of people screaming at each other, when we should all be screaming with each other in lament for our sad state of national affairs.
So let’s return to that question of, “so what do we do?” Well, first, in keeping with the heartbeat of who I am and the approach I began (and intend to continue) in All Things Reconsidered, I will pursue the answer to this question less in the collective form and more just for myself.
I do this because far be it from me to assume I’ve cornered the market on WISDOM. But, I can speak from my own individual experience however understanding that your mileage may vary on how relatable / applicable my process can be to your situation.
If it’s helpful, great! If it is not helpful, also great! I’m barely figuring my own deal out, so I don’t presume my conclusion to be the definitive and comprehensively correct approach for EVERYONE.
In terms of how I want to move forward with politics, there’s obviously not a clean and easy answer. I think some of moving forward is about doing the difficult work of throwing off the shackles of my inherited political beliefs, because like my inherited faith, those are the things I carry with me because of circumstance and regionality, not so much because I ever had a moment of clarity and choice to specifically opt in to those beliefs.
And as I learned during my process of spiritual deconstruction, in beginning to disassemble ideas and beliefs, there has to exist a companion process of reconstructing something out of the rubble. Otherwise, you’re just a nihilist and there is no chill to be had with nihilism. Trust me; I’ve dabbled.
For me, my political reconstruction process began with a small list of absolutes I remind myself of every election cycle:
I cannot get objective truth from a cable news channel or Facebook.
Political parties do not care about me, the individual.
Politicians do not care about me, the individual.
Just like my attendance at church shouldn’t be the extent of my faith experience if I want to have a strong and vivid faith, me voting in elections should not be the extent of my civic experience if I want the nation to be a better place.
Democrats are not evil or good in totality.
Republicans are not evil or good in totality.
Good, benevolent, and genuinely wonderful people will vote Republican.
Good, benevolent, and genuinely wonderful people will vote Democrat.
It is reductive and dangerous to assume if someone doesn’t think like I think, that they are a grotesque buttcake.
Any time I get out of sorts or get caught up in a twitter thread or begin to think dogmatically, I come back to these absolutes to function as my constant and the prism through which I should view all things political.
More specifically though, when it comes to deciding who I want to cast a vote for, below is the primary set of criteria I use when considering which presidential candidate to vote for.
How much do their policies / supported policies consider the plight of the most vulnerable, most marginalized, and most discriminated against?
How much do their policies / supported policies emphasize the necessity of accountability for individuals as well as large corporations?
How much do their policies / supported policies consider how to reconcile with the national sins of our past, be they cultural, financial, or environmental?
How much do their policies / supported policies act in the best interest of our national and global futures?
How well do they embody the most important (to me) parts of being a leader: empathy, vision, accountability?
Again, this isn’t perfect and it isn’t the end all be all approach that is flawlessly applicable to everyone.
BUT, it has helped me reconsider (drink) politics and turned it from something that felt overwhelming and disappointing and instead allowed me to recalibrate it into a process that I can actually feel some clarity about.
READS SECTION
How Hatred Came To Dominate American Politics…*
Every State’s Slogan, If We’re Being Honest, Visualized…**
The Highest Paid Actresses in 2020…
How Boomer Parenting Fueled Millennial Burnout…***
Eat, Pray, Conspiracy: How The Wellness World Embraced QAnon…
The 20th Anniversary of Hot or Not and How It Shaped the Web…
Did Dodgeball Teach Us Anything?
Sleepwalking Is the Result of A Survival Mechanism Gone Awry…
GOOD DOG SECTION
LISTEN SECTION
In Our Time: The Battle of Teutoburg Forest
Dan Snow’s History Hit: The White Ship
WATCH SECTION
This first watch is a nice thing Hope Writers did for me where they gave me a link to pass along to you all where you can watch an interview I did with the INCOMPARABLE Emily Freeman. We talk about writing, publishing, podcasting, and ALL the things and if you are at all interested in any of it, I urge you to watch/listen.
Additionally, if you are interested in becoming an author but don’t know where to start, I cannot think of a better place and a better group of people to help you attack that dream, than Hope Writers.
(Full disclosure, I am an affiliate of Hope Writers, but I was a huge fan of them long before affiliate status.)
Innocent Babe In The Woods RyReynolds is kind of growing on me?
This is exactly how I reacted anytime one of my kids tried to come in my office when I was recording episodes for The Popcast…
I've struggled with how to articulate my thoughts and opinions regarding politics. When I read the "Write Section" this week, I felt like you were in my head. It resonates with everything I've been mulling over during the last few months (heck, this YEAR). Thank you for being willing to write it... I've been hesitant to say anything to anyone on any platform (in person or otherwise) about anything I think about almost anything because things just seem so dang ugly. It's really encouraging to know that some of my thoughts are similar to what someone else is out there thinking... thank you for sharing and putting this out there. It's something that I think will be a great resource to point people - not to mention that more people need to know about your newsletter and The Popcast and all the things, too!
Knox McCoy, this reconsidering politics section is so dang good. I wish it could be more widely shared. Both the 9 point reminders as well as the how you choose which candidate to vote for. Really excellent and concise and I'm grateful that you wrote it. Thank you, genuinely.