Political Discourse in Door County

At the height of the passion surrounding this summer’s gubernatorial recall election, a most disturbing fact was uncovered by a Marquette University poll – 29 percent of Wisconsin residents said they lost friends, or stopped speaking to friends, because they disagreed over whom to support with their vote.

That statistic came to mind over the last few weeks as I sat in my living room listening to rival political conventions. I have a terrible habit of watching television with a laptop close at hand so if one bores me I can always turn to the other. During the conventions my computer was all aflutter with email messages, Tweets, Facebook posts, and every other kind of social media telling me that whomever was speaking at that moment was either a blessing from heaven above or sent to destroy America by the devil himself.

That’s how ugly our political discourse has become – if it is even still worthy of the name “discourse.”

I have some pretty firmly held political beliefs of my own, but my tendency is to focus on what we agree upon because those are the things we can begin working on. That’s what I do for a living at the Door County Community Foundation. But when a friend posts something online that makes my blood boil under the guise of “just sharing the facts,” I feel an overwhelming desire to respond in-kind. Or even worse, I want to elevate the vitriol by sending my friend something which I know will inflame them even more.

How is any of this helpful to our country? How does it foster our coming together to address our community’s shared problems? We need to be able to openly and honestly discuss the issues confronting our society – be it in Door County, across Wisconsin, or the nation as a whole. There will always be disagreements about which course of action is correct, but we have to find a way to stop talking past each other and begin engaging one another with respect.

This is the stuff we learned in kindergarten.

But somehow sending all our friends an inflammatory email has become a normal part of civic discourse. That’s absolutely absurd. Writing an angry letter to the editor isn’t an attempt to discuss an issue. Posting a link on Facebook isn’t trying to persuade either. Too often these are nothing more than acts of vanity designed to make ourselves feel superior to those who are on the other side of the political aisle.

The truth is that my friends are smart people who will make an informed choice when casting their vote in November. Only narcissism allows me to believe that their support of a different candidate is conclusive proof of their ignorance and my superior intelligence.

It’s incredibly arrogant for me to think that I can simply send them an email, post something on Facebook, or write a letter to the editor and suddenly my friends will abandon their beliefs, see my unrivaled wisdom, and conclude that I was right all along.

My friends are much smarter than that.

Yet that’s what passes for most political discourse today. We pollute each other’s email boxes with increasingly negative diatribes under the guise of “educating” or “informing” each other. Blindly emailing or posting partisan political messages does not educate, it enrages. It doesn’t inform, it only irritates.

If I want to convince you that you’re voting for the wrong person, I should talk with you. I should give you a call, offer to buy you a cup of coffee, and we should discuss it face to face as friends. Who knows, maybe it will be you who convinces me. Regardless of the outcome, if we would simply move our political discourse out of the virtual world and into the real one, the tone and dynamic of our discussion would immediately change.

Because in the real world, we still remember what we learned in kindergarten.

For some reason that I cannot understand, the basic rules of a civil society disappear when we’re not in the same room with our friends. We’ll say things in an email or a letter to the editor that we couldn’t imagine saying to a friend sitting across the table from us.

But even if in person our ideas or demeanor still offend, when we’re sitting down together our instinct is to seek out some common ground. I might not agree with your actions, but I can see that the values that lay beneath them are not so different than mine. We all want what’s best for our country, our community and our family. We just differ on how to get there.

It is in that realization, in that recognition that we are not so different as our politics make us seem, that we find the seeds of a shared community we can plant and grow by working together.

Bret Bicoy is President & CEO of the Door County Community Foundation. In 2008, he and his wife Cari returned to Wisconsin to raise their six children in the community they love. Contact him at [email protected].