Daniel Cox, "Democrats and Republicans Should Argue More -- Not Less", FiveThirtyEight, Dec. 20, 2020.

“If you want to have less conflict, have more conflicts.”

That’s how I remember what Mennonite mediator Ron Kraybill said at a church conflict workshop in the early 1980’s.

Sweeping conflict under the rug, Kraybill said, does nothing to resolve it. Avoidance leaves us stewing in our various camps, nursing resentments and poisoning relationships. When something finally triggers a confrontation, the factions come to the fight fortified in their positions, quivers overflowing with complaints, real and imagined. A difficult conversation becomes a devastating explosion.

Instead, Kraybill advised, if your congregation has disagreements, discuss them early. Get the various viewpoints on the table. Make sure people listen to each other, to learn why opponents’ views seem right and reasonable to them.

You’ll have open conflicts more often. But you’ll dramatically reduce the chances of a conflict tearing the group apart. Learning to trust each other in conflict allows the group to live comfortably with disagreement, and may even teach us to appreciate diversity of opinion as a feature, not a bug.

More conflicts. Less conflict.

Today (December 22, 2020) Daniel Cox, writing for the secular political analysis website 538, gives us similar advice about political disagreements at family holidays, titled “Democrats and Republicans Should Argue More – Not Less.”

“I don’t support the kind of social media sniping that has become a mainstay of public discourse,” Cox clarifies. “But… political disagreement is actually critical to a democracy, so when we’re able to have these kinds of disagreements with people we know and trust, like family, we should.”

Some families may have less political conflict these days. Of course, COVID is keeping us apart. But we are also likelier to choose spouses, friends, even neighborhoods based on shared political views. According to recent studies Cox cites, most Democrats and Republicans have no one with opposing political views in their immediate social circles. Cox helpfully explains some of the central dynamics causing this to happen.

Cox cites studies showing that members of both major parties are likely to overestimate how much members of the other party disagree with them. People tend to latch onto views expressed by extremists on the other side, and attribute those views to everyone in that party. Without real conversations across party lines, partisans’ views of each other decay into stereotypes. Partisans conclude people on the other side are not just mistaken – they’re willingly in league with evil. We gorge on fake news and conspiracy theories to help us gear up for combat with those moral monsters.

Bring this to the holidays, and it’s easy to see why we might approach family gatherings more as minefields than celebrations.

Cox comes bearing good news: if you make voters with diverse discuss politics with each other for days, remarkable things can happen. People’s views of their political opponents can improve markedly, and the percentage of participants with faith in American democracy can double.

These were the results when the University of Chicago tried it in 2019 with 526 participants.[1]

Unfortunately, the University of Chicago study has nothing to say about 4 hours with smaller groups in a COVID Christmas gathering. And Cox doesn’t tell you how to do these conversations. For that you should read Tanya Israel’s Beyond Your Bubble, already reviewed on this site.

But there is at least some good news in Cox’s piece: people can have long conversations about politics and come away with stronger relationships, more empathy and understanding for each other, and more hopeful views about American democracy.

Maybe it’s too late to put a good political discussion under your Christmas tree this year. You’d need to get your Kindle copy of Beyond Your Bubble and read it to be ready. Maybe you won’t even be able to gather with your kin this year. But maybe this good news will bring a little extra hope for a way out of our broken political culture. And there’s always next year.

-- Ron Mock

[1] A fuller account of this study is available at “What Would Happen If American Voters All Got Together and Talked Politics?”