#83- How to Talk to Your Friends About Politics

This episode is going live the day before the 2024 presidential election.

And something that we always hear from the left and the right, from every presidential candidate, is that this election is the most important election in history.

There will always be doomsday rhetoric, or there will always be prophetic rhetoric.

But this episode is about how to talk to your friends about politics.

Times like this, and even when we're not in a presidential election cycle, it can feel very tricky.

And oftentimes, we say to ourselves, should I even talk to my friends about politics?

Because it can get hard, right?

But I'm here to tell you, I believe you should.

Maybe not all the time, but it shouldn't be off the table.

Now, I'm doing a little segue into this episode.

There's some visuals in this episode.

You can either watch it on YouTube, or I will dictate the visuals to you on the audio podcast.

Also, we have a video version on the Spotify.

So if you're on Spotify, feel free to look at the video version wherever you need to.

If this is your first time listening to the Talk to People Podcast, it's great to have you.

It's all about helping young adults live more social lives.

In this instance, being social about your political beliefs and how you're feeling in political times.

We know elections will come and go, but friends, that's going to be what keeps us happy.

So I hope you enjoy this episode.

If it adds you any value, be sure to share it with one person.

And remember, life is better when we talk to people.

Onwards.

Okay, this is completely new territory for me to make a video about politics.

Because frankly, I don't talk about politics that often.

I've always been told, don't talk about sex, religion, or politics.

Maybe you've been told the same thing.

But in this video, I want to make a case for why more of us should be talking to our friends about politics.

We are leaving so much off the table.

I want to lay out a framework for how to talk to your friends about politics.

I'm going to share a couple of books that have been very helpful to me.

I'm also going to use this little whiteboard right here, and I have a couple of visual aids that are going to be helpful.

For instance, let's talk politics.

A little bit later in the video, stick around for it.

I have a expert, someone who's studied political communication.

They taught political communication at the university level for over 40 years, and they've advised presidential candidates on debating.

So they know a lot about conversation, especially tense conversations.

For starters, I want to quickly get to what makes talking about politics so difficult.

Sure, we can get into strategy, but we first need to ask that question.

I'll start by sharing.

This is something I've shared on the YouTube channel before, but it's the communication model.

In every conversation, we have two people, typically, right?

And we have a sender and a receiver.

The sender will send a message to the receiver, and the receiver will send a message back.

The E stands for encoding.

Any message that we send to somebody, we encode it.

We have this meaning that we want to share.

We pick our words, we pick our pitch, and our tone, and our speed, and we say something, to which the person who's receiving the message, they have to decode it.

This can get tricky, right?

Someone can say, I'm fine, which is like, okay, I think they're good.

Or they can say, I'm fine.

And then you're like, well, you're saying you're fine, but are you actually fine?

That's what makes it difficult, right?

Thankfully, we have done this in our lifetimes thousands and thousands and thousands of times.

Our brain is like a little social supercomputer.

The number one demand on the human brain is conversations and social relationships, because that's human superpower.

We're not the biggest, we're not the fastest, we're not the strongest, but we can collaborate the best.

We can share ideas, we share meaning, and we build relationships.

Therefore, it's the biggest demand on our brains as well, and our brains have become so efficient at it, because it's key to survival, how well we can connect and get along with those around us.

So we're pretty dang good at this, but it's difficult though, because as we're sharing messages, we're dealing with what we have in the middle, and we call this noise.

Noise breaks up the message, and it makes it difficult for someone to receive the message.

Noise could actually be like physical noise.

For instance, if you are at a really loud party, right?

You're trying to talk to someone, but there's this music going, and you're like, oh my gosh, I just can't hear what you're saying.

It's really difficult to communicate then, right?

Or noise could also be psychological noise.

You just got dumped, and then you have to do a presentation in class, or you have to do a business presentation.

More than likely, you're not going to be as bubbly or as really peppy as you would be if you didn't just get dumped and you're not really sad and heartbroken, or you close the biggest business deal of your life and you're super happy.

You're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe this just happened.

You're going to have a bit more pep in your step than you would compared to the person who got dumped.

Politics, there's a lot of noise.

That's because in one conversation, we're actually having three different conversations.

Stay with me.

I know that's a little weird for me to say.

This book right here talks all about this, Super Communicators.

It was published earlier this year in 2024.

He has a diagram at the very beginning, says that there's three conversations.

What's this really about?

How do we feel and who are we?

I think this is an OK book.

Really though, this book published 25 years before that.

How to have difficult conversations, how to discuss what matters most, is my favorite communication book.

And they're saying what this book is saying, but they're saying it 25 years earlier, in which they label all communication into three conversations.

These three conversations are what happened.

The Feelings Conversation and the Identity Conversation.

Politics is all three of these put together.

What happened?

What happened at the border?

What happened with Big Pharma?

What happened with Roe v.

Wade?

Feelings, I can't believe that happened.

That is so unfair and unjust.

I can't believe what's going on in Ukraine.

It breaks my heart.

And then identity.

My family is Democrat.

I was raised in a blue state.

Therefore, I'm Democrat.

I go to church.

My pastor told me to be a Republican.

Therefore, I'm a Republican.

We get into our heads about this stuff.

Identity is so hard because the things we hold core to our identity, they can be earth shattering whenever we feel like they're attacked.

Feelings are so hard because if we don't recognize feelings, people will just repeat themselves over and over again because they're not actually sharing with you content, they're sharing with you context.

And then what happened is hard because frankly, we can't be caught up with everything that's happening.

It's impossible for us to keep up with all the politics in the world.

You can't keep up with this, then that, then this, then that.

Social media has made it even more tough.

So whenever we enter in conversations, we're thinking about all of this without even knowing it.

We're nervous we may not know what happened and potentially someone will call us out for that.

We're nervous that we hurt somebody's feelings or we prick something that we didn't know was there.

Potentially we say something and all of a sudden someone has an emotional response that was unexpected.

And we're nervous that our identity will be challenged.

So it's really easy to overthink political conversations.

But I think they're really meaningful because of those three things.

Because they can be so complicated and it's so tough.

If we know how to navigate them, there are so many different ways we could connect with our friends.

To understand this further, I'm calling an expert.

This expert is Dr.

Alan Loudon.

And I'm going to go from the in-person recording here and we're hopping to the virtual recording here.

I'm going to catch up with you after this quick call that I have with Al.

You're going to sit in on the call and I'm going to ask him, how do you talk to your friends about politics and what makes it so tough?

To understand this further, I figured we should ask an expert.

So here with me today, I have Dr.

Alan Loudon.

He was a professor at Wake Forest University, now Professor Emeritus.

He's a good friend of mine and he specializes in political communication.

So Al, while I have you here with me, I have to ask, why do conversations about politics get a little bit more heated than other conversations we have with our friends?

Ah, because they're our identity.

It's hard to have a conversation without becoming defensive when it's about your identity.

So we say, don't talk about religion, don't talk about politics.

We talk about those things because they are our identity and we ought to talk about them.

That's sort of the makeup of our lives, our meaning.

So it's not bad to talk about this admiration that we shouldn't talk about them.

It's kind of nuts to me.

They are sensitive because they are how we define ourselves.

And when somebody disagrees with how you define yourself, the tendency is to become defensive.

So how should someone have a conversation about politics with their friends?

You should decide that other people's opinions are theirs, and that's okay.

You should decide further that they're okay.

If you in fact know they're okay, and they're more like you than not, and that their opinions are not yours, and it's okay for them to be different than you, at that point you can actually hear what they're saying.

And if you hear what they're saying, you tend to agree with them often.

Not always, not every time, but often.

And the conversation happens when they can actually hear you.

When can they hear you?

When they're not defensive, and when you're not saying they're wrong, and you're saying, this is my opinion, this is why I believe it, they can hear that then.

You got to make an audience receptive to talking to you in any conversation.

And a lot of that has to do with your respect and acceptance of them.

Would you say that social media has made it more difficult to talk about politics with the people around us?

If you talk through social media, it's certainly more difficult because there's not an ongoing conversation.

It's asymmetric, right?

And so it's also the tendency to know you can get away with things.

There's a tendency to even reasonable statements are heard as yelling, or admonishment, or correction, or here's what's wrong, or here I am right, and you're crazy.

Even ordinary statements get that kind of meaning because of their embedded social media, apart from the person and apart from a conversation.

And so they tend to be misinterpreted and stronger than they really are.

Something you showcase exceptionally well.

And when I had you on the podcast, it was something you touched on a lot.

But it was how to find the humanity and those around you, even those you disagree with.

And you had mentioned we have a lot more in common and a lot more to agree on, then we can give ourselves a chance to focus on.

So could you talk a little bit more about that when you talk about politics?

Politics is a little bit different.

All of us are quite mixed in our politics in real life.

Most conservatives have a number of what you would call liberal points of view, and most liberals are pretty conservative because that's human nature, and they also think we should pull up the borders as well, for example.

And so in a sense, when I say that this idea to go look for agreement is a little bluesy to me, a little flimsy, because everybody says the same damn thing, go find their sameness.

I start with the notion that we have a lot of the sameness, and just augment, let that be told, agree with people occasionally, see where they're coming from, and they're not unreasonable, and acknowledge that, then conversation can flow.

This idea that we're going to go find out the common ground.

I don't know what common ground is.

I'm also saying, we don't agree to disagree.

We actually disagree, okay?

Now, what do we actually agree about as well?

It seems like some people will say, agree to disagree, and that's the end of the conversation.

But what I hear you saying is, agree to disagree.

We could then have a conversation.

Agree that we disagree, not agree to disagree, which is to stop it.

Agree that we disagree.

Now, that's interesting.

That's worth talking about.

And why do you see things like you do?

Now we got a conversation.

Yeah.

What are some questions someone could ask in a conversation like that?

Actually, mostly, you can ask leading questions, but they're not the questions of what's wrong with you.

They're not questions we'll have you thought about, and I'm right.

They're questions that just say, well, how do you see this?

Let people express their opinion.

And if they actually have to do that, it gets more mellow, surprisingly, when they actually have to articulate what they think.

What they think is a little more nuanced gradations.

I mean, the immigration is a pretty good example, right?

We basically, everybody's going to close everybody else out who's not like them.

Yet, at the same time, they want somebody to tend their garden.

They want the labor market to work.

They know it's a nation of immigrants.

They want it to work so that everybody just flags to this notion of we'll make it legal.

But that's not clear at all what that means.

Have a conversation about what that might mean.

What would legal immigration mean?

Because most people are all over the board and mixed.

They're for it and against it simultaneously.

And if you get that conversation going, as opposed to the Trump or building the wall or the Harris, we're going to do what you do.

Or you wouldn't pass a bill.

If you get beyond the politics of it, what would actually work?

Because most people want it to work.

That's a fun conversation.

And gosh, people don't know what they think when you get right down to it, because it's really complex.

Do you think people should talk to their friends about politics?

Politics is what gives us meaning and what it's part of the reason we live in this part.

Like I said earlier, it's our entertainment as well.

So yeah, we should, but not in the sense of I'm right and you're wrong.

That never works.

But in the sense of we're both right, how could that be?

How about this?

Do you think people should be friends with people who have different politics than them?

They are all the time.

I just don't know it.

Yes, absolutely.

How do you get variety and see things differently if you only associate with those who are yourself?

We have categories of Suburban and Country Club and Hillbilly, and all these different ways we identify groups and dismiss them, and then try to take away their voice.

To me, that's absurd.

The Hillbilly, except for Striking Oil, is the same person as Beverly Hills we know from the old comedy show, Beverly Hillbillies.

So we're all people.

Get over it.

We all know people who are different than us if we would allow that.

And we ought to seek variety, I think.

But we don't.

We seek comfort.

We seek comfort.

That's pretty human nature.

It's not all bad either, of course.

We seek comfort, which results in us not befriending or spending time with people who have different political beliefs in us.

Seeking comfort.

And that's all you know creates an other.

It creates those people who are not as worthy or not worth the voice or are wrong.

And when you start there, it's pretty hard to have a conversation.

That's really good.

So talking about conversations with politics, should we ask people who they voted for?

No.

No.

Why not?

Well, that's their business.

There was a really fun story yesterday about, was actually Julia Roberts put out an ad where she does the voiceover.

And the ad basically says the wife can vote differently than the husband because it's private.

She doesn't have to tell her, tell him how she voted.

Go to hell basically.

And it was like, you know, you as a woman do not have to vote as your husband tells you.

So the ad starts with her husband telling her, you're going to do the right thing, aren't you honey?

And she says yes, and she goes in and votes for Harris.

That's the voiceover, Julia Roberts.

That's people's business.

It's not my business.

And if you, people will tell you how they vote if you give them a little license and an acceptable conversation.

Yeah, that's something that I admire about you, as you had mentioned.

You don't have to ask people who they vote for.

If you give them enough time, more than likely, they'll tell you.

Most people want to want you to know, because that's part of who they think they are.

Yeah.

Now that could be a conversation killer, right?

If they voted differently in you, and you know they're wrong.

That's a little trickier to talk about politics.

There might be a time when it's easier to talk about Aunt Sue and what's happening with the nephew or niece.

A little bit of a subject change, right?

Might be appropriate sometimes, yep.

And speaking on that, do you think it's ever appropriate to draw some boundaries when it comes to friendships?

Maybe we won't talk about politics because it doesn't seem like we can't?

Well, if you can't, yeah, sure, make a boundary.

If it's just every time goes into a big fight, if it becomes a divorce every time you have a conversation about politics or it gravitates to what's wrong with your family versus my family or something, things can have a vector or a way of growing in a way you don't want.

So if it's the starter and gets to places in a conversation that are not healthy for relationship, don't go there and agree not to go there.

Sure.

Well said.

Well, thank you for being here, Al.

I wish I was in North Carolina with you.

Me too.

And I'll talk to you soon.

All right.

Thank you much, sir.

I'm sure you saw, but I was taking a ton of notes during that conversation.

One of my favorite things that Al had said was, agree to disagree is so often used as the ending of a conversation.

You may be having an argument or something like that.

You're like, hey, agree to disagree.

And it's like, okay, that's the end.

But in political conversation, something that we can say is, hey, I agree that we disagree, but that can be the beginning of many conversations.

Let's talk about what we disagree on.

Let's talk about how even though we do disagree, there is a lot of nuance.

That's the second thing, is great conversations touch on nuance.

Great conversations touch on the difference between interests and positions.

This is from this book right here, Difficult Conversations.

Oftentimes in politics, we only get here, positions.

I am a Democrat.

I am a Republican who's pro-life.

Yet we never get to interests.

Interests is why we're standing where we're standing.

Positions is where we're standing.

I am standing here as a Democrat.

Interests is the reason I'm standing here as a Democrat, is because of X, Y, and Z.

We are much more likely to connect over interests than we are over positions.

But in politics, we never give our friends the time.

So as we're navigating the craziness of politics, don't be afraid to talk to your friends about it.

Don't be afraid to ask your friends what they're thinking.

Don't be afraid to ask them how they're feeling.

What we know is everyone says each election is always the most important election ever.

But as Dr.

Loudon said, we survive.

And the reason we survive is largely because of the people in our lives.

So, we need to really invest in them even during what may be seen as a tense time.

Don't let this feeling of not knowing how to talk about politics prevent you from connecting to your friends during this time.

This video is going to go live the day before the presidential election.

So, if you're candidate one or if you're candidate lost, be sure to talk to your friends about it.

In addition to that, if you need help talking to your friends, if you just moved to a new city and you don't have any friends, I have a video about that.

If you want to create a new third place to where you can meet new friends, I have a video about that.

And I have a YouTube channel all about making better friendships so that you can live a longer and happier life.

I'd love for you to subscribe.

And without further ado, remember, life is better when you talk to people.

Real quick, if you enjoyed that episode, could you leave a like, a rating, and a review on wherever you're listening to this podcast?

It is a goal of mine to grow this podcast as we end 2024 and go into 2025.

And I would love for your feedback.

I'd love for you to leave feedback.

Okay, well, wherever you are, I hope you have a great day.

And remember, life is better when you talk to people.