insofar as it tricks people into thinking they are getting better at talking about that which they’ve buried, that which they think, that which they feel, that which is true.

Of course, being able to speak honestly is a truly vital skill and cannot be placed in the bin of Stuff I Accept I’m Bad At if one hopes to live anything close to his best possible life.

But make no mistake, candor with a stranger (i.e., therapist) is not such a vital skill. It’s something, sure, and there are benefits that may be cultivated in the process. But the same fears of judgment and rejection that usually prevent “speaking one’s mind” are significantly reduced in interactions with strangers. Thus, you aren’t actually getting better at speaking well with people you know, just at speaking well when nothing’s really on the line.

So whenever you think I’m totally spent, I can’t do any more, you are almost certainly incorrect.

much of the inequality discussion is based on a “fixed pie” view of the world: the rich get richer by taking from the poor. It’s zero-sum, and the rich are winning. It should be no mystery then why someone, especially a vulnerable someone, would view immigrants with skepticism: there is a “fixed pie,” and the more people going for a piece means my piece will get smaller – or disappear entirely.

Shouldn’t that be a good thing? Isn’t this “voters holding leaders accountable”? This is the whole point of a democracy, right?

While not perfectly aligned, what best helps his re-election, should best help the country. Or, politics have become so divorced from reality that we need to reconsider the entire governmental system.

Life must fail, love doesn’t.

Here we are again getting fired up by the news of the day just itching to talk with someone about it. I gotta vent. And so it is that now all conversations trend toward politics.

But what if what we fully controlled (i.e., our actual lives when not reading the news) was deeply interesting? What if the incredible thing you just did, saw, pondered, earned is what you couldn’t wait to talk about? Suddenly, politics would no longer be so interesting, triggering, or consuming and our conversations would be better, would be more meaningful. When, however, our actual lives are boring…

There must be an official name for the propensity to remain disciplined until you aren’t, and then upon that slight discipline slip throw away ALL discipline, as if degrees don’t matter.

Well, now that I’ve had one doughnut, I might as well eat all 12. 

But I gain so much pleasure from [x].

So?

So, are you saying I don’t get to do [x] anymore? 

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. 

—

If things are radically wrong, radical changes are required. Stop expecting this to be pleasant.

In the midst of a terrible moment, “better” seems a hopeless, foolish wish; the temperature will rise forever and always. Of course, that’s not how anything works. Ebbs do follow flows, even if the change arrives not nearly soon enough.

The end of Trump, whenever it comes, will not magically wash away all tensions. I do think, though, it will subdue one terrifically corrosive element of the culture whereby you see someone with a MAGA sign or hat and conclude the is awful. Accurate or not, this clearly is not an ideal reaction if one cares about both community and individual well-being. To be sure, going forward there will be other markers that trigger negative responses, but I struggle to see any of them surpassing Trump. I have this faith because it’s tough to imagine a more divisive figure than Trump. If that prediction is true, whenever future triggers begin, one can partially comfort himself by recalling that this current thing can’t possibly be more incendiary than Trump. I may not like this thing you support, but at least it’s not Trump. 

Any discussion about our current polarization is guaranteed to include some commentary about how our “echo chambers” are part of the problem. Which totally makes sense. If you only listen to one set of ideas, you are much more likely to believe those ideas are correct. But, actually, I think what we have is indeed worse than pure “echo chambers.”

Listen to any partisan media – from The Daily Show to Rush Limbaugh – for a mere 10 minutes and you’ll quickly notice that opposing voices are not only not absent, but featured prominently. Hell, the entire programming model is play clip of political rival, make fun of clip, and repeat. Some of this is particularly egregious when the rival’s point is intentionally misinterpreted or when a particularly fringe rival is cast as representative of the other side. Though even when that perniciousness is absent the point is the same: the other side is so stupid so as to not even be worth trying to interpret charitably. This amounts to something far worse than an echo chamber because a consumer does rightfully¹ believe he is indeed hearing from the other side. Echo chamber? I’ve heard all those lib senators and they are idiots. This belief is surely possible because the host will always direct you to that conclusion, because the host is telling you what you want to hear.² Which is all to say that the consumer is far more sure of his rightness than he would be if he only ever heard his own side speak.

The not-actually-echo-chamber phenomenon is also weirdly true with Twitter, the place everyone is so sure is an echo chamber. The disconnect is apparent as soon as someone, inevitably, talks about how Twitter is such a “wasteland filled with hate.” This sounds fine, but it doesn’t compute. If everyone only listened to their own side, who is doing this hating? Some can be explained away as the fun of “scoring points” on the enemy. Some can also be explained by the general attraction of celebrity and the desire to stand out. But there remains the non-prominent journalists getting vicious responses to innocuous tweets like, “I’m not going to be writing an article this week.” How does a hater even find this non-trending person? They would have to, like, being following them, right? Even if you want to dismiss this all as bored people having fun by trolling, these people are necessarily being continually exposed to ideas they do not support. And unlike in the case of Rush Limbaugh, there is no host telling them why the idea is awful.

Hence my skepticism that “listening to the other side” will get us out of the current mess.