Disagree better

When we lived in Utah, the governor started a campaign working with other public officials around the country to encourage people to “disagree better.” It was met with some positive response, but a significant percentage of the vocal political class greeted his suggestion with derision of some kind.

Either he was being unrealistic, hypocritical, or asking people to compromise their beliefs by suggesting we all take a moment to see things through someone else’s eyes before responding. Regardless of his motives, he raised a good point about where things are in the world today.

I’m used to this in sports fandom. It’s always amazed me how two people can watch the same game, cheering for opposite teams, and both will gripe about how the officials are calling the game unfairly against his side. The mistreatment is in the eye of the beholder, but both can’t possibly be right.

Politics is very much the same way, and too often in much more heated ways. Two people can watch the same video of the same event and come to completely different conclusions about what happened and who is to blame for it. It gets more heated because there seems to be a race to be first to state definitively what happened despite not really having the facts.

Whenever something happens in the world, the political talking class can't even wait for facts to be known because they all needed to be the first one to jump in and state an opinion. Too many of us then follow suit and to with confirmation bias as our guide. You don't even need to know who is speaking to guess what he or she would say, just look at whether they had an R or a D next to their name.

Whoever the “they” is that decides what side political parties are going to take, to do, and to say these days, they do not allow for anyone to step away from the party line without ridicule. The problem with being so quick to jump out and state an opinion as to what happened when you don't have all the facts is that eventually someone is going to discover truth. It might turn out you weren’t as right as you thought you were.

Hopefully at some point we can all stop predetermining outcomes based on our partisan blinders and think about people whose lives are affected by the events of the day and by the things we say.

While we wait for truth to be known, maybe we can take a beat, stop casting stones, and mourn with those that mourn, reach out to bless someone else's life. It sure seems like a better choice than turning on each other in anger.

My mom always told me that “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” I think she was trying to tell me that it’s okay not to be the first person piling on. Maybe we could all use a little encouragement to disagree better in all aspects of life.