I love lots of people. Not all of them watch the same cable news.

I have this fantasy that people I love will stop watching Fox News. That one day they will wake up and understand that realizing democracy is a collective and lifelong endeavor. I imagine there will be a day when they connect individualism and divisive politics to the obscuring and erasure of  history, knowledge and evidence. And on that day they will see performance “news” for the weapon and the pacifier that it is.

I dream that they will knock on my door. In one hand they will hold Caste: The Origins of Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson, and in the other Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell. And they’ll stand there stunned, looking at me, speechless, all of us basking in our mutual wokeness, until I invite them in where they insist on sitting around the dining room table and discussing how we can all lean in to re-elect President Biden.

“We get it. We see it.” They’ll say, flipping through bookmarked pages to read passages that position racism as a caste system, along with gender and class, a system that consciously endures. They see it in the storytelling of Wilkerson who recounts with aching simplicity the experience of being branded and treated as less than in the American caste system. Her body, person, heart abused and dismissed. Airplane. Basement.

“We get it. We get how it all fits together.” They’ll admit as they sheepishly hold up Montell’s book, then furiously flip to pages 81 and 82 where I see “problematic populist” highlighted, “animalistic” “loaded language.”

Then I wake up. I’m reading alone- Brene Brown’s Braving the Wilderness The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone. I convince myself a few pages in that this book falls squarely in the self -improvement genre. Beyond telling me that grounded theory was used I have none of the requisite details I need to properly analyze this research. She presents her findings, a roadmap of sorts or a list of words that if you squint could be fragments of any positive saying scribbled on fluorescent index cards on a lonely New Year’s Eve.

These will be hard, she warns, and she hits me with the list. Bring it! Says my brain.

• “People are hard to hate close up. Move in.” With a microscope
• “Speak truth to bullshit. Be civil.” Sarcasm is my second language.
• “Hold hands. With strangers.” Like at church when you give that quick wave of peace to one person and turn around avoiding eye contact with everyone else
• “Strong back. Soft front. Wild heart.” I think I’m in a cult.

Because words like belonging and authenticity and “braving skills” are soft language. I wonder if this soft language isn’t being scrambled into its own true enough, not really actionable form of telling us all to get along best seller. But this book was surprisingly difficult. It made me see belonging and authenticity as an equation. If my desire to belong is greater than my desire to be true to myself then I’m giving away my capacity to think, and that’s not authentic connection; it’s joining. Joining is superficial. It’s a way to be counted and to feel included and maybe even protected. But the world needs more connection. The world needs us.

It’s easy to think of others as you know- others. Those people who showed up at my door, read up on all the books I read, and are now seeing things how I see them. But the others I thought about most were the people I assume agree with me.

How is the assumption that Democratic leaning voters all feel the same way about all issues hurting our weakened democracy? Are we oversimplifying issues? Are we silencing each other?

Let’s take for example, the right to bear arms…

Our system has divided us into two camps. In a polarized system, we don’t discuss how we got here. We choose a side. Brown tells a story about the judgement of a colleague when she learns Brown supports common sense gun laws but doesn’t support banning guns. Okay. Maybe? But how do we process the onslaught of the recurring breaking news? A suburb of our city are told to remain in their homes. Several people shot. Gunman at large. Public health and safety is more important than Brown’s guns. I’m angry. I feel hopeless, and I have been that person who judged Brown for her equivocations. Committed. Certain. Ready to categorize- who is with me and who is against me. But the harder the times, the harder the stance. Can we imagine a time when disagreement will not feel like a threat? Can listening save us?  

I hear Justices Sotomayor and Coney Barrett are getting along. Isn’t that beautiful. They’re friends it seems. They sit across the table from each other at lunch. They keep the heated debates in the courtroom mostly. And they don’t let disagreement get in the way of their relationship or their public appearances where they model their congeniality. Relearning civility is important, but I worry that stories like this confuse civility with reconciliation. We can’t use civility as a way to avoid conflict. Justice Coney Barrett may be making a slew of more moderate decisions off the public’s radar, but that doesn’t change her role in the removal of federal protections for women seeking abortions. Don’t hate the woman, but reform the system that gave her this power.

So yes to lunch and no to pretending. And maybe after a couple hundred meals together you and I will still disagree just like Justices Coney Barrett and Sotomayor.  But I hope at the very least we can give each other something to think about. And I hope we take ourselves to the polls and vote like people who aren’t falling for the everybody let’s get along method of connection, which is not connection but blind civility in the face of crisis.

So as you see it takes more than one book for me to learn my lesson. Still sarcastic. Still clear about what’s at stake in this election. Still me. But maybe a softer version. That part of me that loves the cause in me more than the cause needs to shrink. That part of me that loves the cause blindly needs to take a step back.

I love lots of people. Not all of them watch the same cable news.

The “news” channels agree. Our freedom is at stake. I have a fantasy that we turn away from cable news and we turn towards each other. This is no one’s fault and everyone’s responsibility. Vote.