Healing America’s Narratives: Enough With the Talking Points.3
[Part of a series, this essay focuses on the intersection of Healing America’s Narratives: the Feminine, the Masculine, & Our Collective National Shadow with Enough With the Talking Points — both books available here]
In the June 26, 2023 post, we introduced five broad categories that are essential to consider if we’re genuinely committed to doing more good than harm in conversation (the subtitle of Enough with the Talking Points). On July 27 we took a look at the first category: knowing yourself, your views, and your biases.
In today’s post, we’ll explore the second category: Honoring facts and identifying opinions, which requires us to avoid labels, insults, and sweeping generalizations, and to get specific, factual, personal, and aware of others.
Let’s unpack that language and provide some examples.
“It’s too hot (or cold) in here” is an opinion.
“The reading on the thermometer is 78 degrees” is a fact — whether the thermometer is broken or working well.
These are facts: In the U.S. 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden received 81,268,924 popular votes — 51.31% of the votes cast — and 306 electoral votes; Donald Trump received 74,216,154 popular votes–46.86% of the votes cast — and 232 electoral votes.*
These are opinions: “The only way we can lose is if they steal the election.” “The election was stolen.”
You get the idea.
These words from Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s agenda on his presidential candidacy website combines labels, insults, and sweeping generalizations: “Replacing the woke mind virus with reality, facts, and enduring principles,” and “holding woke corporations and school unions accountable.”
Nowhere on the site (at the time I read it) was the word woke defined.
Here’s how to do more good than harm within these examples:
Regarding the temperature in the room, something like this would work: “I’m feeling really hot right now — are you? Would it be okay with you if I lowered the thermostat?” This approach is personal — “I’m feeling…” rather than “It’s too hot…” and it demonstrates awareness of an other who may or may not feel the same.
Regarding, “The only way we can lose is if they steal the election,” well, there’s no way to resolve that. It is based in conjecture and future-telling, and at best and worst it is dishonest — since it has no evidence to back it up, regardless of who says it or when. Similarly, “The election was stolen” bumps up against the election officials in the federal government and in the states — Republicans and Democrats — all of whom the election was valid. As stated, neither of these expressions is specific, factual, personal, or aware of others.
Regarding “Replacing the woke mind virus with reality, facts, and enduring principles,” and “holding woke corporations and school unions accountable,” anyone using such language would be well served by the following:
- Provide clarity by defining what you mean by “woke”.
- Delete the “mind virus” language, which is simply an insult.
- Demonstrate the difference, if you can, between “woke” and “reality”.
- Once you’ve defined “woke” provide clarity on what a woke corporation and a woke school union are and how you would hold them accountable.
Enough.
The best way to apply this is by listening to yourself in conversation — keeping vigilant around facts, opinions, unhelpful labels, insults, and generalizations.
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*Some news agencies and political groups have slightly different popular vote totals (i.e the last three digits — meaning under a thousand votes) but the agree on the percentages rounded to tenths: 51.3% for Biden and 46.8% for Trump. The numbers cited above are from the Federal Election Commission and the American Presidency Project. For comparison, check out the New York Times and Fox News (which for some reason gave each candidate an additional tenth of a point).
