Posts tagged “society”

An infantry team leader told me Muslims saved his life. A restaurant owner who prays outside abortion clinics said he doesn't want a theocracy. A software engineer with Confederate ancestors called the statues "ugly anyway." These are the people I found when I stopped reading about the other side and started talking to them.

The Inspiration

In 2015, I had a chance encounter at the Orlando airport with a drunken tugboat deckhand from Kentucky who told me he was voting for Trump. Instead of dismissing him, I listened—and we found unexpected common ground. He cared most about healthcare for the elderly and disabled, something he'd seen done right while living in Germany. We shook hands, two people who agreed about something important despite what the media told us about each other.

That moment stayed with me. As the 2020 election approached, I found myself increasingly worried about my filter bubble. My Twitter feed, my friends, my colleagues—everyone I talked to shared my views. I had no idea what people on the other side actually thought, beyond caricatures. And I suspected they had no idea about me either.

The teacher who shaped me most was one who savagely insulted his students. My earliest role model, Mr. Meacock, has died.

A bartender invented putting a lime in a Corona. That small habit spread and made Corona the most popular beer worldwide. We have folk wisdom for food—"An apple a day." What's our folk wisdom for technology?

Today it only takes an imprudent tweet and a long plane ride to rise from obscurity to global infamy.

I voted for Obama, Bernie, and Hillary. I embrace my LGBTQ colleagues, friends, and family. I sold my Prius to bike to work. I donate to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. And yet I regularly censor myself—out of fear of a hair-trigger outrage cult composed of my ideological peers.

When I did a report on Albert Einstein in 3rd grade, I cherished him as a grandfatherly eccentric, whose portrait hung with uncharacteristic solemnity in my dad's study. I watched Young Einstein and learned the tall tales of his youth (I suspected he didn't actually diffuse an A-bomb by shredding on an electric guitar). I read the word "pacifist" for the first time.

The most poignant moment of my year occurred tonight in the Orlando airport as I slurped boxed wine from a pint glass while waiting for a delayed flight.

Dennis ("the Menace", he humblebragged)–a drunken, bearded, thoroughly unmanicured tugboat deckhand from Kentucky (even I feel like I must be making this up), materialized near me and my colleague, Serena, as we stood quietly absorbing airport merlot during a thunderstorm.