Tonight's Debate

I just read someone (@MATrueblood on Twitter) making a very well-meaning plea for liberal voters to not just ignore or dismiss Trump supporters and conservative ideologues because these people and their concerns don't just go away.  He claimed watching something like tonight's debate isn't about making up your mind, but rather hearing both sides in full, and being able to engage with people who disagree with you.

"It truly is about having a common starting point for difficult conversations and persuading by being non-judgmental and demonstrating a real understanding of the other half of the country's ideas, perceptions, and concerns. It's about debate outside that hall as much as within it."

I love that mindset.  I just don't know that it's realistic at this point.  I think a major problem that he's overlooking is that you cannot begin to have the difficult conversations without the common starting point.  It's a failed assumption that this debate, or really any part of this political process, has the potential to be a provenance for a common starting point on any single issue, let alone the sum of all the nation's disunity.  You can't begin to have constructive dialogue on an issue when there is, at best, extremely limited agreement on the facts pertaining to that issue.  When you have competing sources delivering contradictory realities, you're going to have individuals approaching each issue with differing 'truths'.

Try talking to any firm Hillary Clinton supporter about concerns over the failed neoliberal policies of the past 30 years, for which the Clintons represent the first family.  It's a nightmare.  You get nowhere because these are 'non-facts' within the accepted dialogue of the party.  These unsavory histories have either been altered to show a different actuality, or have altogether disappeared down the memory hole.  Any reasonable person can see that it's largely these policies, in combination with the suppression of socialistic alternatives, that have lead to the mass discontent of working class Americans, which has unfortunately manifested itself in the rise of, and support for, someone like Trump.  If we can't meet at the starting point of honestly examining the effects of these policies, having an understanding for and conversations with this half of the electorate is impossible.

The same, I think even more obviously for most of us, goes for Trump supporters.  This movement is a completely misguided reaction to some very real grievances and valid distrust of Clinton and those in the same mold.  But again, you can't begin to engage many of these people in meaningful discussion because they're coming to the table with a sense of reality that's skewed so far beyond objectivity that it really feels hopeless trying to hear them out and reason with them on their concerns.  They've read a different version of history and current events than their opponents.  What hope is there for understanding someone's perceptions when there's such a gap in the information?

We're never going to be able to agree on what to do if we're not even in the same ballpark on what has happened and what is happening.  If there's one thing you're not going to see tonight, it's any equitable discussion on where we're at and how we've got here.