“Why do athletes (Megan Rapinoe most recently) continue to refuse to visit the White House? If they really have issues with the Pres, wouldn’t visiting allow them the opportunity to speak to him and speak their concern to him in person?”
This is one of my biggest issues with our current political environment — if you engage with the other side it’s somehow seen as an awful thing to be willing to do.
If Megan Rapinoe truly disagrees with Donald Trump on a bevy of political issues, wouldn’t it make sense for her to request a meeting with him and make the case on the decisions he’s made that she disagrees with? I think so.
Think about this from a historical perspective, the reason Martin Luther King, Jr. marched was to get a seat at the political table with a president so civil rights laws could be changed. Even if, potentially, that president disagreed with his political goals, getting a meeting was a MASSIVE deal, the entire reason for the protest. The goal was to get in the room and by getting in the room to be able to effectuate change.
Nowadays it seems like people want to protest just to bring attention to themselves rather than engage in constructive dialogue and bring about change.
Why is that?
First, because I think most of what is being protested today isn’t actually that impactful — things are pretty dman good in America today even if people want to argue otherwise and second, and I think more substantially — because once you sit down with someone you disagree with you have to acknowledge their common humanity and you might end up liking them, even if you disagree with their politics.
That’s why I defended Joe Biden for pointing out that working with people you disagree with on many issues is a big part of political success. What Biden was illustrating in talking about his work with the segregationist senators was that even though he disagreed with their politics then, he might still be able to make common ground with them elsewhere.
That’s what normal humans do.
We don’t all agree on everything, but we also don’t all disagree on everything either.
For instance, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are very dissimilar on many issues, but they agree that America needs an aggressive response on China. Just because Bernie disagreed with Trump on taxes, does that mean he shouldn’t try and work with Trump on Chinese trade if that were possible?
It’s also possible that by interacting with someone you might help them to change their minds. Look at Robert Byrd, the former Democratic senator from West Virginia. He was a KKK member in his early political career, but by the end of his career he was a voice for civil rights. People are complicated and sometimes we’re wrong about issues or our opinions evolve. How does that happen? Frequently by interacting with people we choose to spend time with.
You don’t get people to agree with you by calling them awful, vile names, you do it by the power of persuasion.
I don’t consider it a badge of honor to attempt to silence someone I disagree with. Now, I want to win the debate with someone I disagree with on issues that matter to me, but I’m not a guy who runs and hides from people with different political persuasions. For instance, I’d welcome Jemele Hill on my new Wins and Losses podcast and let her argue for what she believes in without feeling like that somehow devalues what I believe in.
I think Trump would probably meet with Megan Rapinoe and other members of the US women’s soccer team and listen to their concerns. Would his opinions change? Maybe, maybe not. There is certainly evidence with Kim Kardashian that Trump has been open to famous people convincing him to undertake an action he otherwise might not have undertaken. But no matter what the result would be, I suspect Rapinoe and her teammates would have to acknowledge Trump isn’t Hitler once they met him in person.
And that’s ultimately why they don’t want to meet him.
Because they’d rather believe in Donald Trump as a Nazi boogeyman because it confirms their world view is all correct and his is all wrong.
That’s what this current cancel culture is all about — if you want to cancel someone’s opinions or someone’s audience what you’re really arguing is they don’t deserve to be heard by anyone. Which is, you know, what totalitarian dictators do.
The truth of the matter, whether people believe it or not, is that most complicated issues in this country are complicated because there aren’t easy answers. If there were easy answers there wouldn’t be good arguments on multiple sides and we’d have fixed those issues long ago.