Verified by 
At least about this, many of us can agree: Our politics have never been more partisan. People with opposing views seem like crazed aliens to one another.
The bitter rage frightens me, and not just other people's rage. I have strong views myself, and reading certain opinions that clash with mine can make me hyperventilate.
I have two questions: Why is my reaction so over the top? And how can I humanize those with opposing beliefs?
I started to think about this more seriously after the 2016 election when the loathing of the opponent became so extreme. Moved to do something, I tried to find Red and Blue voters willing to sit down—in my living room, with some wine, cheese, and a professional moderator—in a joint effort to understand one another. The goal was not to change opinions but only to give a human face to one another.
My Blue friends viewed my idea as a doomed and excruciating experiment. They were afraid they’d have a meltdown and want to strangle the opposing voters. The Red voters, for their part, were afraid of being attacked. No one was willing to come.
My First Attempt
Out of options, I decided to try talking with my Republican sister-in-law, Ronnie. I doubted I’d learn much from talking with just one person, but I approached her at a family gathering. Ronnie cheerfully agreed to both my proposal and its basic rule: only explaining, no arguing. Her mindset became clear with her first answer:
Elizabeth: How do you see the Blue voters? As sincere? As poor losers?
Ronnie: They’re deluded. They believe things that aren’t true.
Immediately, we passed through the looking glass into a world where nearly everything was reversed. Ronnie believed things about my side that I believed weren’t true.
We talked for an hour and agreed on nothing, but I came away with a much better feeling about Ronnie—and, by extension, about other Red voters. I was touched by her willingness to dialogue and her quick pulling back whenever I stopped her from arguing. Given the completely different set of facts she worked from, I could see the logic in her views.
The experience encouraged me not to give up, and, just then, I started reading about a grass-roots organization, Braver Angels, that was holding workshops between Reds and Blues to reduce polarization. It seemed to be having success. It relied on volunteers to organize locally; two people, one Red, one Blue, would each recruit seven participants of their persuasion and together find a venue. The organization would supply a coordinator to advise the two volunteers and run the workshop. I was in.
The town where my husband and I have a weekend house is a semi-rural, coastal area an hour from Boston. It’s a real place, not a resort town, and is equally divided politically: 50-50, Reds and Blues. Perfect.
My Second Attempt
A friend of a friend agreed to be my Republican partner, and we were assigned a coordinator and a date for the workshop. My partner and I met every Saturday morning to get to know one another and to plan. As with Ronnie, we were on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but we stuck to the rules, and I soon came to like him.
But I began to get nervous. He was dragging his feet. I’d quickly found my seven participants; he had not yet begun to recruit. The town library turned down my request to host the workshop, but I was luckier with the Quaker Meeting House. Finally, my partner called to say he couldn’t go through with it. “Coming out” politically could cost him his local reputation. He was genuinely regretful and explained what had led to this worry. Hearing his story, I could not be angry.
Following his suggestion, I called the head of the local Republican Party, but the result was a near-perfect replay. The woman accepted; we met; I did all the work, and she never recruited a single person. With the date of the workshop nearing, I got on the phone, all day every day—for weeks—and managed to recruit two Red participants. I’d never tried so hard to do anything in my life, and I failed. You cannot have a workshop without equal numbers of Reds and Blues.
Still, despite the frustration, I’d found the answers to my two questions.
What I Learned
First, I think that we are driven to the edge of madness when we confront opposing opinions based on alternative facts, facts that make the two views mutually exclusive. If they are right, we are 100 percent wrong, and vice versa.
Most issues about which people disagree are complex and involve differing priorities or understandings, not the all-or-nothing choice our present politics provides. As a result, it is not only our thoughts that are challenged but also our sense of reality. What pushes us beyond tolerance is a dispute about knowing the real from the unreal—which is the definition of sanity. When someone quotes alternative facts, we want to scream, “Are you crazy? How can you believe such a thing?”
But you can bring yourself back down to earth if you tweak those same words to generate a different meaning: "How is it that you believe such a thing?" In other words: How did you come to believe what you believe? The key is to switch off your outrage by activating your curiosity.
We all come to our opinions because of myriad influences: the political atmosphere in which we grew up, experiences we’ve had at school and work, personal catastrophes, transcendent moments, and all the events of our lives that brought us to this moment. In the other’s shoes, we might have shared their views. If we can engage our internal detective, we may come to understand how people end up with their belief systems.
Curiously, every time I’ve worked with someone to bridge the chasm between our opinions, I’ve felt a surge of affection for them. Listening and being listened to brings out the best in each of us. Trying to put ourselves in the other’s life is a loving effort.
My initial interchange with Ronnie was much like the ones that followed. We ended with our political passions intact—but with a change of heart about one another.
