Guide to Talking About Politics (Or, 5 Handy Tips for Not Being an Insufferable Ignoramus This Election Season): Dark Chocolate Spicy Caramel

Last night I engaged in the futile, barely entertaining practice of watching the first Presidential debate. I got through the whole painful thing with the help of some Ghirardelli and cheap beer, but we didn't learn anything new, no minds were changed, and I logged into Facebook afterwards with a sinking feeling in my stomach. Sure enough, there was the obligatory tsunami of partisan memes, "fact checks," stilted commentary, and general dysfunctional chaos. *sigh*

It frequently feels like we’ve reached peak political madness, with two of the most despised presidential candidates in recent memory, tons of private money pouring into our elections, the worst political polarization we've seen in decades, racial tension erupting, political scandals, banking scandals, violent attacks, and the media feasting on it all like a dog wolfing down a rotisserie chicken.
 

However, as bewildering and chaotic as everything seems right now, it is made infinitely worse by all the meaningless, partisan noise being bandied around on social media, message boards, and more, by generally well-meaning people whose minds are made up and only want to trumpet that to the world. It’s not that commentary is a bad thing – being engaged in the process is incredibly important – but just adding thousands more badly fact-checked sound bites to the giant partisan machine isn’t helping anything. 

So, on the theme of debates in general, I'd like to offer my 5 rules for behaving like an adult while discussing complicated stuff. Feel free to share! Civilizing the Internet may be a lost cause, but Borges wrote that "only lost causes should be attractive." Therefore, without further preamble, as a concerned citizen, sometime Internet user, and a politically-minded human being, I would like to offer this as my personal guide to being a Responsible Participant in the National Dialogue.

A Guide to Talking About Complicated Stuff

(Or, 5 Handy Tips for Not Being an Insufferable Ignoramus This Election Season)

1. Shut the Fuck Up

            For God’s sake, stop contributing to the meaningless noise.

Hollering that you support gun control doesn’t do a damn thing. Posting cartoonish memes of politicians looking dumb with some reductive, tragically biased, out-of-context phrase stamped over their face doesn’t do a damn thing. What are you trying to prove? That you’re more obnoxious than anyone else on Facebook? Because it’s working.

If you want everyone to know you’re in support of 2^nd amendment rights, then write something about why you support open carry, or whose policies you agree with and why. If you want to let your liberal flag fly, write a thoughtful post on the Democratic Party platform. Don’t junk up everyone’s feeds with more senseless vaguely political white noise.

I know: reposting these things is a quick, easy way to convey where you stand on an issue and connect with friends who agree. But this isn’t the time or place for these kinds of “atta-boy” affirmations. In a country struggling with a breakdown of dialogue and increasing polarization, we don’t need to be reinforcing this kind of simplistic, tribal reasoning. Trying to reduce an entire issue or candidate to the size of an Instagram post is about as ridiculous as trying to draw an accurate representation of the solar system with a 4-pack of Crayolas.

If you want to junk up my feed, post pictures of baby otters. Or your daughter’s latest crafting project. Or pasta recipes.

If you’re looking for affirmation, take it offline.

2. Do your Fucking Homework

In three parts! 

Part 1: Fact check your memes, people. Seriously. I swear to God, if I see one more meme saying that Clinton is going to take away all our guns I’m going to scream. You’ve heard it a million times before, and I’ll repeat it again here, because apparently it hasn’t stuck yet: Just because it’s online, does NOT make it remotely true. Even if it agrees with your ideology and looks semi-legit. Maybe especially if it checks those two boxes. This is one of Google’s highest callings – put it to work. The beauty of the Internet is that these answers are usually just a few clicks away, so you don’t typically even need to work that hard for it. You’ll look smarter and you’ll be able to actually speak intelligently about the things you wind up talking about.

Part 2: If you post something and then find out it’s inaccurate or untrue, take the damned thing down. Delete the post. There’s enough junk on the Internet that we don’t need gratuitous garbage information floating around perpetuating itself through infinite reposts.

And, finally, Part 3: be an accuracy cop. If you know your shit (I’m talking real policy, people, not partisan bullshit), and you see your friends and family perpetuating the false or partisan bullshit, call them on it. Be civil, be kind, don’t be an ass, but let’s be each other’s keepers.

Friends don’t let friends post stupid shit.

3. Argue Like a Grown-Up

Can we please all accept that using the “so-and-so is DUMB!” hasn’t been an effective way to win an argument since we were 6 years old? Our country is at a crossroads, and we still have throngs of otherwise responsible adults who fling around insults as a way of attempting to interact intelligently.

“Only idiots believe…” is a great way to alienate a bunch of people, particularly since it’s generally not true. “You’re stupid!” or “what an idiot!” are great phrases if you’re writing a comedy sketch, but have no place in discussions of real consequence. Absurd, condescending language like “moron,” “Drumph,” “Killary,” “lunatic,” and the spectacularly dysfunctional term “librtard” just manage to make you look like a flailing, reactionary neanderthal who's in over your head. 

Don’t call anyone a moron because of what they believe. Instead, make a real point about why you think what you do.

When in doubt, think back to your debate teacher. Would your debate teacher approve of how you’re approaching this? Then it probably won’t do any good. Reconsider. If you didn’t take debate, use this nifty rule of thumb: the first person to insult, degrade, or otherwise attack their opponent’s character loses the debate instantly.

Take the high road. The view is better from up there.

4. Accept that You Are Both Wrong and Ignorant. Yes, You.

Are you a Supreme Court Justice? Are you a Senator? The President, maybe? Maybe just a Governor? No? Didn’t think so.

So don’t act like you know everything there is to know about the law, the constitution, or interpreting said documents. Because you don’t. I don’t, either. I’m necessarily wrong about a lot of things, because I haven’t made it my life’s work to understand them.

However, there are people – brilliant, thoughtful, well-intentioned people – who have made it their life’s work to understand these things, and they’ve come to some pretty radically different conclusions. Justice Scalia, may he rest in peace, disagreed with me on a shit-ton of issues. And you know what? He was way better informed than I am to make those calls. You may disagree with Ruth Bader Ginsberg on everything under the sun, but she’s far, far better qualified than you to be making those decisions. That’s why she’s on the Supreme Court and you and I get into flame wars on Facebook.

Can we please all accept that we’re not right about everything? That we are, in fact, probably wrong about most things? That vastly different interpretations are valid, important, and contribute to this wonderful, evolving, living Democracy of ours? There has always been tension between progressive and conservative values, which is right and good. The real work of Democracy happens in the constructive wrangling between the two. (Emphasis on constructive.) Democracy doesn’t work when there’s a runaway victory of either ideology, and it doesn’t work when there’s a deadlock between the two. I daresay either scenario would eventually look pretty ugly for everyone after a while.

5. Fuck the Echo Chamber

One of the amazing things the Internet does is that it makes it really easy to find like-minded people to connect with. We may have a few token friends from across the aisle, but you can truly spend your entire life looking at comfortable, affirming newsfeeds that reassure you that your candidate is right, the other side is the enemy, and you should really pat yourself on the back for being so enlightened. Your friend posts things that make you feel oogey? Unfollow them! They don’t ever need to know, and you don’t ever have to see their icky opinionated socialist/gun rights/third-party candidate/race relations babble.

We listen to conservative/liberal talk radio, we read conservative/liberal news outlets, we talk to our conservative/liberal friends. Our conservative/liberal families reinforce our ideas and ideals, and we live, breathe, and move in a world where it is assumed that we will be good conservative/liberal soldiers.

These echo chambers we create for ourselves have the effect of reinforcing themselves over time. The longer we spend in them, the more information we have to support our previously formulated views, and the more validation we receive from the people who agree with us. This is terribly, terribly dangerous. We run the risk of becoming reasonably well-informed but radically different and fundamentally opposed species; speaking on the same issues, referencing the same source documents, but with no frame of reference to connect with or understand each other, and no incentive or impulse to make a real effort.

Please, please, don’t fall into this trap. Make some friends who disagree with you on important things, and then make a monthly lunch date to talk about those things. Dare to talk about politics at family gatherings. Listen to real, substantive commentary that you disagree with, and really try to connect with the people and motivations behind them. No one wakes up in the morning thinking “ah! Another lovely day to spread chaos and undermine Democracy!” Start by assuming that the people who make you uncomfortable have reasons, probably good reasons, for believing what they do, and then work backwards from there.

This whole Democracy thing doesn’t work if we lose sight of each other as human beings, and it doesn’t work if we stop listening to each other.

I look across the aisle, and I see people who are every bit as concerned about the direction and the welfare of this country as I am, but somehow we've managed to wind up speaking entirely different languages. We hurl catchy slogans and verbal feces at each other, hoping that something will stick, and wondering how this disastrous dumpster fire of an election could possibly have happened on our watch. I can't answer that. I'm just as baffled and dismayed as anyone else. But I think we could stand to return some civility and thoughtfulness to our national dialogue. That might help start the conversation.

Here's some chocolate to help. 

Item: Dark Chocolate Spicy Caramel 
Percentage: ???

Made By: Ghirardelli
Made In: San Leandro, CA
Price: $16.95 for 33 squares (I got the smaller bag, but I can't find my receipt)

Review: Ghirardelli is a giant, soulless chocolate conglomerate, befitting a celebration of the giant, soulless political machine. A member of the Lindt family of businesses, Ghirardelli has been making chocolate in the California Bay Area for more than 160 years, and was the first major chocolate producer to popularize putting the cacao percentage on the packaging. They are one of the better giant, soulless chocolate conglomerates, but that doesn't make them "serious" chocolate - their "dark" chocolate reads a lot like good milk chocolate, really (maybe 60-ish%?), and the vast amount of production mean that the chocolate has very little in the way of character. The Spicy Caramel flavor is a new one in their classic filled squares line - honestly, the flavor profile reminds me a lot of the Chili Nut M&Ms from this spring, just with somewhat better chocolate and without the peanut in the middle. The caramel is in a nice, oozy, creamy center, surrounded by a crisp chocolate shell, and chances are you'll find one or two of the squares in your bag have sprung a leak and lost some of their filling, but fortunately there's no shame in licking it off the foil wrapper. The "natural chili pepper flavor" is interesting - it doesn't really *taste* like anything, it's just kind of *there,* so the spicy adds some interest, but not much character. Still, it manages to cut the sweetness of the caramel nicely, and it's a fun, somewhat unusual flavor combination. Overall, I'm glad I got them.

RECOMMEND, WITH CRAPPY BEER AND A SIDE OF OBNOXIOUS PARTISAN BULLSHIT

With love,
 - K