Read: The cruelty is the point
Silvers and Holland have found some new boundaries for their own dialogue as a result. “For us, there are bottom lines in protecting the dignity of people around their race, sexuality, gender identity, and religion that are inviolable,” they write in I Think You’re Wrong (But I’m Listening). Some of their listeners, they add, were surprised when the pair declined to take a “both sides” approach after violent incidents occurred at a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017; many listeners, they found, had expected them to defend the white supremacists’ right to free speech. (“Plenty of people are willing to use their platforms to emphasize freedom of speech and assembly,” Silvers later wrote in a blog post addressing listeners. “In this moment, in this instance, I’m not willing to use mine that way. My voice, my work is to say, ‘That’s wrong. That’s unacceptable in America in 2017, and our businesses and politicians and families must say so in both words and actions.’”) Silvers mentioned in conversation that she and Holland also don’t take a “both sides” approach to marriage equality: “Marriage equality is a bright line for us. We have not invited anyone into our conversations who advocates against marriage equality.”
Ultimately, however, Silvers emphasizes that while they perhaps won’t share a podcast or any sort of public platform with people whose beliefs might infringe on their commitment to human rights, they still have to peacefully share a country with them—and sometimes their readers and listeners will have to peacefully share homes, dinner tables, holidays, and beds with them, too. So in cases where people find themselves trying to engage in a political conversation with a parent or a sibling or another relative who espouses beliefs that dehumanize others or advocates for the denial of human rights, Holland said, the best course of action is to avoid engaging in the same type of dehumanizing behavior. “The stakes are high and it feels so easy and so justifying to be angry—to lash out, to dehumanize the other side,” Holland said. “But the best reaction to a leader or an administration that does that is like a conversational version of nonviolent resistance.”
The emergence of Trump as the polarizing figure around which families divide themselves has also led Holland and Silvers to advise their readers and listeners to “zoom out” and move their political discussions as far away as possible from the administration itself. Better than talking about Trump or the border wall, Silvers offered as an example, is talking about immigration in general; better still, she said, is starting with open-ended questions about what the people she speaks with believe about immigration. When Silvers, a Republican who does not support Trump, talks with her friends and family members who do, “I’ll say things like, ‘Who should get to come to America? And where should we get to go—if I wanted to move to Canada, what should that process look like?’” she said. “Let’s have a broader discussion so we’re not talking about an individual.”