{"id":7946,"date":"2016-11-19T12:24:58","date_gmt":"2016-11-19T17:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newvinegrowing.wordpress.com\/?p=7946"},"modified":"2019-06-07T13:38:01","modified_gmt":"2019-06-07T17:38:01","slug":"can-we-treat-our-country-like-the-first-thanksgiving-dinner-table","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/can-we-treat-our-country-like-the-first-thanksgiving-dinner-table\/","title":{"rendered":"Can we treat our country like the first Thanksgiving dinner table?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember last week, when we all thought we wanted the election to be over so the hostile, divisive politics could give way to healing?
\nOh, how naive we were.
\nWe’ve been driving toward a polarized system for decades<\/a>, amplified during Bill Clinton’s administration with the Newt Gingrich-led Contract With America. Today’s divisions are just the latest development in a long trend.
\nWhat if we stopped shouting at each other and generalizing about each other, and tried to talk with each other respectfully?\u00a0<\/strong>
\nIf my husband and I talk about what we want to have for dinner, just between the two of us it’s possible to come up with more than two reasonable answers.
\nTake a major complex issue like\u00a0abortion or guns or immigration or trade \u2014 is it really possible there are only two binary views on any of them?\u00a0Instead of seeing\u00a0important issues facing our country as two football teams we can root for or against, could we start with finding the parts of those issues where we agree?
\nFor example, every pro-choice advocate I know would like fewer abortions in America. That’s what pro-life advocates want, too, so is there an opportunity to start where they agree instead of locking into an all-or-nothing battle?
\nGoing\u00a0back to the oversimplified analogy of my husband and I making our dinner plans, we start by checking some basic assumptions \u2014 we’re both eating dinner tonight, we’d like to eat dinner together \u2014 then we each list off options. I’d love tacos or a veggie stir fry, my husband would eat pizza almost every night … but he also loves tacos. So we don’t argue\u00a0how I don’t feel like pizza or he’s not feeling stir fry, we move forward on our agreement about tacos.
\nA big part of why this works is that we care about each other’s happiness. We aren’t trying to win, we’re trying to cooperate to find a way that works for both of us.<\/strong>
\nCan we treat our fellow Americans with the same love and concern we’d show a family member? Can we see all 320 million Americans as our extended family?
\nWhen you’re having Thanksgiving dinner this year, if you’re sitting across the table from someone who voted differently than you, will you throw gravy, flip the table and walk out? Or will you hug and try to broach your differences in a way that’s civil and doesn’t ruin dinner?
\nCan we think of our country as a bigger version of Thanksgiving dinner?<\/strong>
\n

\"This<\/a>
This is how I was taught Thanksgiving began, with pilgrims and Native Americans sharing a harvest feast.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nMy Midwestern childhood was full of images of Indians in feathered headdresses joining newly arrived pilgrims to celebrate the bounty of our shared land. In elementary school, we dressed up in construction paper pilgrim hats to re-enact\u00a0two cultures coming together over a meal.
\nEven if you don’t believe the first Thanksgiving actually happened<\/a>, think about that origin story: When white people showed up in a place\u00a0Native Americans already inhabited, the natives\u00a0showed the immigrants\u00a0how to survive, then celebrated their success.<\/strong>
\nWe travel great distances to eat turkey with our families around this tradition built on unity, not division.
\nHow differently would Native Americans and Europeans have seen the arrival of pilgrims to stake a claim to North American soil? About as differently as Trump and Clinton supporters see the results of Nov. 8?
\nThe reality is that about half of Americans didn’t vote for president this year<\/a>, about a quarter voted for Trump, about a quarter voted for Clinton. The split between the major candidates was narrow, with Clinton getting more of the popular vote<\/a> and Trump getting more of the Electoral College<\/a>.
\nMeanwhile, I watched a video of conservative commentator\u00a0Glenn Beck <\/a>where he cites statistics that more than half of Trump and Clinton voters were not happy about voting for their candidate. (I haven’t been able to find the source of that number, but here are some related figures<\/a>.)
\nIf you voted, you and your fellow supporters of your candidate are in the minority in the U.S., and further, there’s division among those who voted for the major party candidates.
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