Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The L.A. Times' Terrible Advice How to Treat Your "Trumpite" Neighbors

Episode Date: March 11, 2021

What would you do if your political opponent shoveled your driveway? Search for ulterior motives? Give them cookies? You know something's wrong when you can't say thank you to some one who disagrees with you politically, and yet that's exactly what the https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-02-05/trumpite-neighbor-unity-capitol-attack (L.A. Times is publishing on its opinion page). In this episode, we look at why we hate our opponents, love winning, and value our tribe's success more than facts. But does this jive with what Jesus said about how to treat our enemies? Does it match Jesus' ethic of radical neighbor love, and bottomless forgiveness? Do you follow us on https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (Twitter)? Now's a great time to start: https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (@tmbtpodcast) Don't forget to follow https://twitter.com/keithsimon_ (Keith) and https://twitter.com/patrickkmiller_ (Patrick), too. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. If this podcast has been helping you in your walk with God, would you take five seconds to help us? Hop onto Twitter and follow our new Twitter account at TMBT Podcast. If you go there, you can see our latest episodes. You can also follow Keith and I and send us messages. We'd love to follow you back and see what's happening in your life.

So Patrick, you feeling the unity? You feeling all the love that's going on in our country right now? Oh, absolutely. Every morning I wake up, I look in the mirror, and I say, I love you, you love me. We're a happy family. That's what Barney taught me as a child. That's not exactly. Oh, my house was always a Barney Free Zone.

Yeah, I wish my house would have been. Is it for your kids? I will never allow them to watch that Purple Dinosaur. Oh, thank goodness. I wasn't the only one because I thought that maybe I was just a little bit odd. See, you and I are unified on this thing, a mutual hatred. So we do have unity. We do have love.

We're anti-Barnie. No, I do not feel the unity at all. It is amazing. We were talking about this yesterday over text message. I tend to be an equal opportunity offender. So I have this knack for saying things that bother everybody. And maybe that says something about my personality. But it seems like I can't get a statement out without offending someone's sensibilities on either.

And it's always political. It's very rarely religious. It's on the left or on the right. I think everybody recognizes that the country is pretty polarized right now. President Biden spent a lot of time talking about how he wanted to be a president that unified the country. And I think that's in large part why he won. That was a message that resonated with people. We need to be more unified.

I loved what he said about unity. In fact, on his inauguration day address, which again, he was attacked. And he certainly, he's a progressive president. He's going to have progressive policy. I don't know what's shocking here. But he said some things about unity. And I got on Twitter and said, hey, I think he's a really good thing. that he's saying that we should listen and abided by.

Wow. That's horrible. That's private school humor for all you people out there. I love a good pun. I've been working on my dad jokes. You go to Patrick's Twitter feed and you can find some private school humor. My homophone jokes, homophone. Those are brutal.

They're not funny in the least. Oh, they were hilarious. If you read it out loud. Anyways, let's keep going down this path. Anyway, so you have books like Ezra Klein wrote a book on polarization, why we're polarized David French, wrote the book, Divided We Fall, in which he treats as a legitimate possibility that we might have succession. In fact, I think some state parties, political parties, Republican parties have even gone on record calling for their state to secede from the union.

So there's this call for unity in the midst of polarization. The problem is I'm not sure it's working. Along the same lines a few weeks ago, an article came out in the LA Times. And you said that to me, Keith, I honestly thought this belongs in the onion. It read like a piece of satire. And so the author, Virginia Heffernan, is that right, Heffernan? Yeah, I think you pronounce it Heffernan. She was a political. It's funny when you read people and you don't know how to say their name. She's a political columnist with the L.A. Times, which makes sense out of why she's writing this in that paper. When I did a little bit of research on her, I found out she went to the University of Virginia, did a master's and a Ph.D. Harvard. She's worked for the Times, Harper, Slate, I think she was a fact checker for the New Yorker magazine. That's where she got her start. So she's accomplished and a good writer. She's a great writer. And she writes this interesting piece about a next-door neighbor who plowed her driveway after it snowed. And rather than describing it, because it is admittedly very funny and also very awful, let's just read through it and talk about it. Oh, heck no. The Trumpites next door to our pandemic getaway who seem as devoted to the ex-president

as you can be without being Q fans, just plowed our driveway without being asked, and they did a great job. How dare they? Again, like I said, it's funny. I don't like, she's making fun of people, but I have to laugh at her writing. She keeps going,

how am I going to resist demands for unity in the face of this act of aggressive niceness? Of course, on some level, I realize I owe them thanks. And man, it really does look like the guy back dragged the driveway like a pro, but how much things? These neighbors are staunch partisans of blue lives, and there aren't a lot of anything other than white lives in the neighborhood.

So notice that she just starts bringing race in from the very beginning of this, that here she's drawing attention to her pandemic getaway, which, by the way, I don't have a pandemic getaway. You don't have a second house? I'd love to have a pandemic getaway. Maybe we could go in on a second house with like four other people. She lives in this bubble where she doesn't expect any truble. Trump supporters to be around. She's kind of offended by their very existence. It's not only that.

It's interesting to me that we've reached this point as a nation where it used to be 10 years ago. I think about Occupy Wall Street. She would have been too embarrassed to admit the fact that she has a second house in the LA Times, but now she can admit it and come at this guy. So she not only thinks that he's plowing her yard, maybe because he's a racist, but let's just keep going here. Hezbollah, so she's going to compare him to terrorists.

Hezbollah, the Shiite Islamist political party in Lebanon, also gives things away for free. The favors of Hezbollah. This is insane. She's comparing a person who shoveled a driveway to a terrorist organization. Let's just let me keep going. The favors Hezbollah does for people in the cities, tire and sidem probably don't involve snow plows, but like other mafias, Hezbollah tends to its own, the Shiite sick, elderly, and hungry. They offer protection and hospitality and win loyalty that way. And they also demand devotion to their brutal, us versus them, anti-Sunni cause. Some of us. us our family, the favors say, the rest are infidels.

So let's make sure we get to what she's saying here, is that Hezbollah, this terrorist organization, does things for people who support them, but they treat people on the outside as, well, they treat them really poorly, maybe even kill them. And so now what she's saying is that this Trump supporter, they might be like Hezbollah, who do things for white people or do things for people that vote like them. But she can't quite figure out. why she is the recipient of such a kind act. Is that right? Is that what she's wandering?

I think that since she's trying to get across, exactly that. And what is it that she shares with this Trump supporter? Because he's clearly not shoveling her driveway for her political beliefs. They obviously disagree on that. And I think the case she wants to make is that he's probably shoveling it because she's white and he's white. Okay, keep going. When someone helps you when you're down or snowed in, it's almost impossible to regard them as a blight on the world. just over the record, I'd let anybody shovel my driveway.

Yeah, I totally agree. Or my lawn, which I keep saying. All right, let's keep going. In fact, you're more likely to be overwhelmed with gratitude and convinced of the person's inherent goodness. You might end up like the upper middle class family I stayed with in France as a teenager. Okay, so first he compared him to Hezbollah, a terrorist organization. Now, she's getting ready, and this is why Patrick's laughing, she's getting ready to compare this. neighbor who shoveled her driveway to the Nazis.

I'm laughing because she's talking about her stay in France as a teenager with an upper class family. You think she lives in the elite bubble? Well, it's just funny because that's not even a category I had growing up. But anyways, it's fine. It's not a bad thing to go do that. I find it funny that she's so willing to roast him for his apparently racist sympathies. Let's keep going. This is about the French family that she stayed with.

And it is kind of sad. It's actually very sad. They did not attend a citywide celebration for the 100th birthday of Charles de Gaulle, the war hero who orchestrated the liberation of his country from Nazi Germany in 1944. They did have several portraits of Felipe Patain, a Nazi collaborator on their wall. When I screwed up the courage to ask how it was for them during the occupation, so Nazis occupied France during World War II, if you didn't know that, the lady of the house replied, we were happy because the Nazis were very police. I didn't know the word, so I excused myself to consult a French English dictionary. I was in tears when I found the entry, polite.

So here's this Trump supporter. This Trump supporter is like the Nazis because the Nazis were polite, at least according to this family she stayed with in France. And this Trump supporter shares something in common with Nazis. And that is that this Trump supporter is also polite. So forget the fact that the Nazis exterminated over six million Jews. Just they both are polite. And so that must make them very similar. And of course, it's a really sad story.

The fact that someone would say, I like the Nazis because they are polite for the exact reason you just said, is not a very convincing argument to like Nazis. In fact, it's not an argument at all. It's terrible. But to, again, assume that someone else's politeness and then equivocate them with Nazis, it's sad. It's mean. Okay, so let's keep going. So when I accept generosity from my pandemic neighbors, acknowledging the legitimate kindness with a wave or a plate of cookies, am I also sealing us in as fellow travelers who are very police to each other, but not so much to them? How does this woman know that her neighbors aren't kind to all people?

How does she know that they don't treat the, quote, them like they treated her? And isn't she othering her neighbors? Isn't she doing the very thing that she's accusing them of? Except she's actually admitting that she has made the Trump supporter the quote unquote them. She doesn't know that about the motives of her actual neighbor. It doesn't sound like she actually knows this neighbor at all. All she knows is this person supports Trump, ergo or ipso facto, that means that he would not shovel the driveway of a black. neighbor. He would not shovel the driveway. Well, she knows he'll do it for a liberal who will

write about him in the LA Times. Well, one thing I'm taking away from this is that if I ever get a pickup truck or a tractor or something like this, a snowblower, I'm just going to put a Trump sticker on it so nobody like Virginia Heffernan will ask me to help them. Nobody will ask to borrow my snowboard. That is the reason why no one wants to get a truck. Because you get a truck. You have to get a truck. You can I use your truck? But if you just put a Trump sticker on it, then people like her won't ask. I don't know if that's going to work in Missouri. But that's a nice try. Okay, let's keep going. Loving your neighbor is evidently much easier when your neighborhood is full of people just like you. I'm going to lose it. This woman lives in the

same neighborhood as this Trump supporter. That's the whole point. So he is guilty for living in the neighborhood. Oh, people like him. But what about her? Evidently, she's doing the exact same thing. It is, it's weird. My neighbor supported a man who showed near murderous contempt for the majority of Americans, they kept him in business with their support. Dolly. But the plowing. On January 6th, after the insurrection, Senator Ben Sass issued an again, she was funny, he issued an awshucks plea.

Ben Sats is a little awshucks. He's from Nebraska. He plays the part. He plays the role. He issued an aweshucks plea for Americans to love their neighbors. The United States, he said, isn't Hatfields and McCoy, it's this blood feud forever? and he added, you can't hate someone who shovels your driveway. Yeah, evidently you can.

Ben Sass trying to calm everybody down, trying to emphasize what we have in common. Do you think she made it up? I wonder. Like in response to the Ben Sass thing? Because if you were an editor for the L.A. Times and she had submitted this, wouldn't you have said, can we find out this person's name? Would you verify it anyway? I mean, evidently, this evil Trump supporter who shoveled her driveway to be nice,

lives in her neighborhood. So, huh, I don't know. She probably did it. Either way, it says something about it. It just made me think, okay. At the time I seethe, the capital had just been desegrated. And of course, to name it, she wasn't alone. I think a lot of Americans, Republicans and Democrats found this to be one of the most terribly offensive and tragic events of 2021. Let's keep going. But maybe my neighbor heard sass and was determined to make a bid for reconciliation. Reconciliation? Why does your neighbor need to reconcile with you again? Exactly. I don't get it, but keep going. So here's my response to my plow driveway for now. Politely, but not profusely, I'll acknowledge the sassian move.

Oh, gosh. With a wave, and a thanks. A minimal start on building back trust. I'm not ready to knock on the door with a covered dish yet. Don't overdo it, Virginia. I also can't give my neighbor's absolution. It's not mine to give.

Free driveway work, as nice as it is, is just not the same currency as justice and truth. To pretend it is, would be to lie. And they probably aren't looking for absolution anyway. And let's just say yes, of course they're not looking for absolution. Because they didn't do anything wrong to you. do anything wrong to you. Somehow, a neighbor's act of kindness, plowing their yard has become an act of begging for forgiveness for things that we have truly no idea whether or not they are guilty of.

If you live somewhere in the part of the country where it doesn't snow, I just want you know, Patrick is the only one who plows his yard. The rest of us, we shovel our driveway. Plow by yard. My wife's going to laugh at this because she's going to say, no, he doesn't plow his driveway. He also doesn't shuffle it. So let's finish up. But I can offer a standing invitation to make amends, not with a snowplow, but by recognizing the truth about the Trump administration and more important by working for justice for all those who the administration harmed. Only when we work shoulder to shoulder to repair the damage of the last four years will we even begin to dig out of this storm. So catch this now. When that's the end of the article, what this woman demands is for the Trump supporter to fully agree with her.

So this isn't unity across differences. This is unity at the point of surrender. You surrender, you submit, you say you are wrong, you adopt all my worldview, then we will have unity. But I thought unity could be with people that you disagreed with, and a nation like ours with such politically diverse opinions, religiously diverse, ethnically diverse, gender diverse, of course, that we could have some sort of unity according to some common set of values and common decency, like things like, I don't know, maybe like be kind to your neighbor. Maybe like, I don't know. Like maybe shovel their driveway when it snows. But no, no, no, no. According to this woman, the only reason we can have unity is if we all agree. Well, guess what? That's not going to happen.

And of course, we should name the fact, we see this exact same thinking happening on the other side of the aisle. I mean, neither you or I are massive Trump supporters. And I know people who would say that the problem with the world, you want to know what it is? It's the Clintons. It's the Obamas. now it's the Biden administration. And I say that because I can imagine someone on the far right doing the exact same thing. Why would you want to help me? Why would you want to be a part of my? I want nothing to do with you because our political ideologies don't line up unless you want to come into

my camp and agree with me on everything. I want nothing to do with you. Okay, so let's kind of try to unpack this and try to figure out where does this article come from? Like, think of this article has a genealogy or think of it has a foundation or root system. It comes from somewhere. It doesn't just pop into existence. There's a cultural moment where this article makes sense for the LA Times, a major American newspaper, to publish it. And so what I'm interested in is kind of digging down a little deeper and trying to figure out what's happening. Why does she feel this way? Why does the whole country feel this way? Why are we so polarized? And how are we going to get out of the situation that we're in? In his book, coming apart, Charles Murray discusses how

we have slowly, literally moved apart, physically moved apart from each other. We tend to live in neighborhoods with people who look like us, think like us, vote like us. Yeah, Bill Bishop in 1994 wrote a book called The Big Sort in which he began to draw attention to the fact that we are beginning to live around people who are like us and who vote like us. And so maybe you've heard of landslide counties. These are counties in which one candidate won, I think it's by 20% or more. and there's been a dramatic increase in landslide counties because people are living around those who vote like them. But it's not just voting like Patrick alluded to. And Charles Murray lays out in that book, is that we live around people who are financially in a similar situation that we are so that there's more

extreme wealth all living in the same zip code. If you look at some of these super zip codes that are extremely wealthy and you go to, say, a PTA event. What you'll find is that the parents of these elementary age schools and the super zip codes, they're all older. They've had kids later in life. And one of the things that is also true is they've put a ton of resources into their kids' education into these super elite zip codes. It's not uncommon to have your kids take preparatory tests, not for college, but literally wait for it for preschool. People live around each other. They share a lot of values in common. Their work hours, their flex hours, they work from home. You know how many blue collar people get to work from home? You know what is really hard to do? It's really hard to be a mechanic from home. It's really hard to be a custodian at home. In these neighborhoods, they collect these people who are all kind of cordoned off from the rest of the population. Robert Rice, who was in the Clinton administration, a cabinet member, called it the success. of the successful. In other words, in these super zip codes, people who are elite in education,

finances have a different kind of lifestyle. They've withdrawn from the culture and hide together in their gated communities. So, you know, I'm curious about someone like Virginia Heffernan, who obviously has multiple houses, grew up in what appears to be a very elite family. Took a trip to France. Took a trip to France. As a kid, right? And again, has her little holiday house that she's staying in during the pandemic because she's... She's wealthy enough and has the opportunity not only have multiple houses, but to work from home. And you don't see her turning the mirror on herself. Why am I living in one of these secession of the successful neighborhoods? Why am I living in potentially one of these super elite zip codes that has systematically, just by virtue of how much it costs to live

there, probably, as she's even admitted, pushed out people of color. And yet it's the Trump supporter because of his ideology who's the real problem. And it's probably worth pointing out that many of these elite zip codes tend to lean left, although I think you can find them in both left and right leaning communities. Oh, absolutely. Let's ask the question, because you were saying a genealogy of ideas. Where did this come from? How did we get so polarized? So one of the books I read recently is called Uncivil Agreement by a woman named Liliana Mason. And it was incredibly interesting. She pointed out that in 1950 there is a meeting of the American Political Sciences, APSA, American Political Scientists Association. And one of the findings of their 1950 meeting was that the political parties needed to look more different than each other.

Did you catch that? That the political parties in 1950 were too similar. And therefore, what her point is is that the political parties weren't giving people the kind of cues that, they needed to know who to vote for on certain policies. People were just voting willy-nilly, wait for it, based on issues, not based on their political party. And the political scientists saw this and said, hey, well, there might be some good things about it. We need the political parties to be more distinct. What we might say is more polarized on issues so that people know whether they are strongly a Republican or a Democrat, instead of making their decisions based on

individual candidates or issues. So there were significant differences between, let's say, a northern Democrat and a Southern Democrat. There might be some things that they agreed on, but there would be a lot of things that they disagreed on. In fact, Southern Democrats might have a lot in common with Southern Republicans. And so it would be common that you'd see people work across the aisle to get their goals done. So I want you to imagine that you took a time machine back to the 1950s. And you asked someone, are you pro-life or pro-choice? Now, let's pause. Those weren't really categories in the 1950s, but I'm making a point. So roll with me here. And the person looks at it, and they say, well, I'm pro-life.

Now, today, if someone says that you could guess an entire constellation of beliefs of politics around that, you'd say, ah, so you're probably relatively anti-immigration, or at least you want very strict immigration laws. You probably don't want there to be a raise on the minimum wage. You probably, generally speaking, are for lower taxes for businesses. You could guess all those things just because someone said, I'm pro-life today. But if you go back to the 50s and you ask that question in this hypothetical scenario, you wouldn't be able to guess the constellation of beliefs. They would be all over the map. They'd say,

I'm for loose immigration laws and I'm also for, let's not tax businesses as much. In other words, people fell all over the party lines. You couldn't guess. Right. In 1950, they said that only 2% of the electric was considered ideological. And that is radically different today. Like Patrick is saying, if you know someone's position, say, on gun control, you can probably accurately guess their positions on a host of other political issues because we have adopted a whole set of issues that all fall under the left or the right, Republican or Democrat. Now, their point was, in the words, the APSA, the political scientist's point was that people need those cues. And to some extent they're right, you're not going to go through and read all the President Biden's COVID stimulus plan, but you're going to have to

make a decision about it, just like you didn't go through and read all of President Obama's plans on health care. You have to make a decision about whether you are for or against these. And the way we make decisions are queued with the political party that we identify with. It's not because we've read the policies and have our own opinion. It's because the team we're a part of has said we should be for or against. So there are some benefits to polarization, some benefits from having two parties that have clear convictions that are distinct from one another. But the problem is, we've gone way too far. So again, just to give an illustration of why this can be helpful, if you go back to the 1960s, and this one is real history, let's say you were pro-civil rights.

It would have been incredibly difficult to know who to vote for. Voting for a Democrat or a Republican did not necessarily mean that you were voting for or against civil rights, because Southern Democrats tended to be against the civil rights movement, whereas Northern Democrats tended to be for the civil rights movement. So you've got to imagine, now you've got to vote for a president or you've got to vote for someone who's going to put a majority leader in power. Well, you don't know if you're Democratic president or your Republican president or you're Democratic or Republican majority leader is that person actually going to be for civil rights. You don't know because there's not enough unity in the party on the particular issue.

Now, I think it's worth saying here. What we're not saying, because if someone has relatives who lived during this time and say, well, my parents were lifelong Democrats or lifelong Republicans. People did align with parties, but the parties were not ideological. And it's actually interesting because back in the 50s and 60s, if you were in the South and you were a Christian, you were almost guaranteeably a Democrat. In fact, Billy Graham was a lifelong registered Democrat. And that's shocking because Billy Graham was associated with Dwight Eisenhower, Republican, Richard Nixon, probably most closely a Republican. So while he had relations with all the presidents, regardless of their political party, I think most people would think of Billy Graham as a Republican.

He wasn't. He was a Democrat, which shows you how much the political parties have changed. Because there was a time, even in my lifetime, there was a time when there were very liberal Republicans who were more liberal than conservative Democrats. So there was a guy I remember, I don't know why Rush Limbaugh talked about him all the time. Maybe that's why you listened to our previous episode last week named Lincoln Chafee. And he was a senator from Rhode Island. He was a Republican, but he was super liberal. And the Republicans that got mad at him and they called them a rhino, R-I-N-O, Republican in name only. And so they tried to drive him out of the Republican Party because he wasn't conservative enough.

And there's a group now that's much smaller than it used to be called Blue Dog Democrats. And they got the name Blue Dog because they felt like the left was choking him so hard. They became blue, which is kind of weird. But they were called Blue Dog Democrats because they are conservative Democrats. That's the most confusing name that. I get it. But they used to be a big part of the Democratic Party, especially in the House of Representatives. Now, all that's changed. There are no Republicans who are more liberal than the most conservative Democrat.

There's no conservative Democrats who are more conservative than the most liberal Republican. And so the parties have become more ideological and more distinct and more polarized. Now, according to Lillianna Mason, we have organized ourselves around two mega identities, two big forms of identity that have shaped our political landscape today. And the two areas are around civil rights and around religion, Christianity. And so back in the days of the civil rights, people began to align themselves into the Republican and Democratic Party based on how they were responding to the Civil Rights Act. So if you were for the Civil Rights Act, you became a Democrat. If you were against it, you became a Republican. And after the Civil Rights Act, if you were four more radical forms of desegregation, you were going to be a Democrat.

If you were trying to resist desegregation, you were a Republican. So if you're tracking here, you have political divisions and the map onto that racial divisions, and then map onto that the divisions that come with religious culture. Because in the 80s, maybe even in the 70s, you get the rise of the Christian coalition. And so what happens is that your political preferences, mapped on your racial preferences, map on your religious preferences, you get this big mega identity so that not everyone fed into this category, but so that the majority of Republicans were very wary of civil rights and identified as Christians. Those who were Democrats enthusiastically embraced the civil rights movement, and they considered

themselves non-Christian, or at least on the outside of Christianity. And so now- Evangelical Christianity, because you had obviously black Christians who were going to be very democratic. Or mainline Christians. So again, we're talking here about a big picture, obviously using some stereotypes to make a bigger point, but this is how historians and how political scientists think. And these mega identities, well, they do a lot of damage. I'm curious for your thoughts on this, Keith. I actually think that there's a third identity, which I find it interesting that she leaves out.

Jesus identity? No, I think it has to do with the sexual revolution. I think that people begin to align on the left and the right in response to the Rovers Wade cases, the no-fault divorce. There are things that happen which are presenting two different visions of family and sexuality. And again, we see people begin to line up on either side. If you're going to be four, abortion, if you're going to be for the non-nuclear family, if you're going to be four different expressions of sexuality in your against, again, kind of the traditional family model, you're going to align on the left. And if you're for the traditional family, you're against abortion, you are ostensibly even against no fault divorce, although there's actually no difference in

divorces on the left and the right. You're going to end up on the right side. And so you have these mega identities that form, and they force people into one party or the other. And because you're In one party, you tend to align on all of these things on your side, and the other party tends to align on all of those things on the other side. All right, so let's go down a little further into the human psyche and the human soul and try to figure out what is it about us that is so prone to polarization. And there was a study done by a guy named Henri Tajvel. And I don't know if I'm saying that right, but I'm just going to be confident and pretend like it's true. He was a Polish Jew. and he wanted to figure out what is kind of the minimum that's necessary in order for people to have conflict with one another.

And so this study is done in the 1970s. It's kind of called the- It's specifically group conflict. Group conflict, right. What's the minimum necessary for groups to conflict with one another? Minimal group paradigm. So it's in the early 70s. And what he wants to do is just create two different groups with pretty much nothing they could possibly conflict over.

There's nothing really separating from them. And so what he does is he shows people a board of dots, and he asks them to estimate how many dots are on the board. And he tells some of them, hey, you are overestimators because you overestimated the number of dots that are actually there, and to others, you're underestimators. Now, it's all just made up. It's not like he counted, and it's just made up. He just had to have a way to divide them up.

And what he was going to try to do then is put these two groups together and start introducing new information that could create a conflict and figure out, okay, what's the minimum necessary for these two groups to have conflict with one another? What he realizes is that just by being in two separate groups, they automatically have conflict. So one of my favorite experiments he does, he tells people in each group. Here's your options. Option A, everybody, everybody in your group gets $5. So everybody gets $5. Or option B, everybody in your group gets $4, but everybody in that group gets $2. And do you want to guess what they ended up picking?

Of course, you know what they wanted. They wanted less money, knowing that the other group got even less money. And how were they separated? They were separated based on whether they over or underestimated the amount of dots on a board. That was it. Yeah, without seeing the other group members. So without seeing the people who are in the opposing group, without anything on the line, nothing to win. You knew you were never going to see the other group members.

What you wanted to do was win. you wanted to represent the overestimators. You would rather win less money and see the other people lose, get less than you. And what he said was in this study, he said, quote, it was the winning that seemed important to them. And the way that Liliana Mason explains it, it's just shocking to him that what people really cared about was winning and beating the other side. So now think about how this relates to politics. Think about how it relates to polarization in neighborhoods, or maybe when the Trump supporter wants to come over and shovel your driveway, that what people really want is for their tribe and their team to win. And the other tribe to lose.

It's just as important that the other team. Sounds like a great country. Loses. Yeah, that's where I want to live. And I can't help but think about Donald Trump's rhetoric in the 2016 and 2020 election. There was a lot of language around winning. We're going to win. We're going to make America win.

And you can see why that kind of language connects with this tribalistic brain that we all have. Another interesting study that makes the exact same point is they had people come into a room and they asked them, they gave them a list of different policies and said, hey, I want you to write down where your particular beliefs fall. And people would typically fall along party lines. And then they gave them a second piece of paper. And on this piece of paper, it would be their party. So if I was a Democrat, I'd get my Democratic positions on everything. One thing on the list, however, would be changed. It would be flip-flop.

So they would say that a Republican position was now the Democratic position. And they would ask the person, do you agree with this list? And almost everybody would flip-flop. Even though just moments ago, they said that they believe something different. Now that they see that this is the party line, they'll agree and they'll say, actually, this is what I believe. And then it gets even better because they take that thing that they flip-flop on and they say, hey, we want you to write an op-ed. And if you do well enough, this could be published. And it could make a big difference in this cause.

So they asked them to write an op-ed on a position, which when they walked into the room, they disagreed with. And they not only write the op-ed, they will often come up with six to ten different points in defense of the position. Now, remember, they flip-flopped. What are they trying to do? They're trying to defend their tribe.

They're trying to make sure that their tribe wins and the other tribe loses. Now, with all that in our mind, let's talk about another social experiment. This is called the Robbers Cave experiment. And it gets its name because it was conducted in Robbers Cave, Oklahoma, at a state park there. And so what they did is they took,

some fifth grade boys, 22 fifth grade boys, and they put them in two separate groups. But the groups aren't aware of each other. They're your fifth grade boy. There's 11 of you. And these fifth grade boys have everything in common. The people hosting the experiment have done their best to make sure that they are all as similar as possible. And for a week, each team, again, not knowing the other one even exists, just gets to hang out and bond and do fun stuff together, and they gave themselves names. One group was the Eagles, and the other group was the rattlers. I like the rattlers better. They sound tougher. And then after a week, they're told, hey, there's another group of fifth grade boys over here, and immediately the boys want to have some

sort of competition. And so they allow these competitions to happen, and they mix up the competitions, all kinds of different things, and the scoring's kept complicated, so they just keep telling the boys, hey, it's close. It's really close. And whichever team that you Eagles or the Rattlers win, they get a trophy. Okay, so that's what's on the line as a trophy among these boys that they've never met, but they have a lot in common with. And how these boys behaved, well, if you have a fifth grader, it might not shock you. But immediately, just as soon as they found out, there was another team of boys nearby,

they started calling them derogatory names. My favorite story was the thing that they would blame the other team for. So one team, for example, one day they left some trash in their little, area and they come back the next day and they see the trash and they immediately blame the other group of. Yeah, they forgot. They left the trash. Another one is they noticed temperature changes in the water throughout the day and they concocted this idea that somehow the other team was changing their water temperature. Yeah, so these boys start these competitions and it gets so heated that they're throwing rocks at each other. Calling each other names. They're coming up with

the conspiracy theories that Patrick is talking about that the counselors had to step in and separate them. And remember, this is all just for a trophy with people you don't know. So now map that onto political issues that really do a matter, like abortion or climate change or tax policy or the plethora of cultural issues that we are faced with today. How are we going to respond? If we are by nature tribal, if we're by nature wanting our team to win, if we're willing to concoct all kinds of stories and even sometimes resort to violence in order to get a trophy. Now how are we going to handle ourselves when there are real issues on the line? So will we change now that we're talking about important issues and become more issue oriented?

And the answer is no. What everybody's finding out is whether it is a really important life or death issue or a trophy or nothing at all. We are so tribal that we just want our side to win. the only thing that counts is, did my team win? And then he thrown to this entire equation, the problem of cable news, social media, and frankly just mainstream news in general, which is not invested in presenting each side fairly, but is almost inevitably invested in presenting the case for one side only. This is what we talked about in the Rush Limba episode. Now, it makes for way more entertaining politics.

Last year, I watched my first Kentucky Derby. I've never watched one of those before. I didn't know anything about horse races, but I was watching. They run around in a circle. And so I... First one round. So I picked my horse. That's the horse I want to win.

Oh, you were betting. We were just kind of cheering. The kids were down there. We were all having fun. But I'm not going to lie. We were drinking bourbon? Because I think that's what you do. No, I was drinking beer.

I was smoking meat out on the grill. It was fun day. So we're having a good time. And I picked my horse. He picked his horse. And we're cheering. Now, I would like to pretend I was just having fun. But by the time, that very short race ended,

I was deeply invested in my horse winning the race. And that is exactly how our media is presenting politics. We are not talking about policies. We're getting one side and it's presented like a horse race. And so everybody's just out there rooting for their horse. They don't know anything. They're just like me with Kentucky Derby. They don't know anything about what they're rooting for. I just want my horse to win. I think it's a great image. Because if the news media, if they covered the policy, like if they broke down the COVID relief bill or the health care plan or whatever, no one would tune in. They wouldn't make any money. So what they do is they make it into entertainment. And the way to do,

to make it entertainment is to make it about a competition and which team is winning, is your horse winning. So where does that leave us? Well, one thing I think we can't escape here is that we have arguments over identity more than issues. There are times in which Americans are 80, 20 on an issue. Like after Sandy Hook, there are 8020 on background checks for gun purchases. So just be clear, 80% of Americans said, I am for background checks. before someone can purchase a gun. That's right. So it's not like confiscate all guns or anything like that.

And the vast majority of Americans, after Sandy Hill, oh, I could live with some background checks to try to make sure the wrong people don't get guns. But those laws never make it anywhere. But even when you get these 80, 20 issues, oftentimes the law doesn't reflect it. They're not able to push legislation through. And did it the same research show that Republicans, even if they were for doing background checks on guns. When it came to the question of whether or not the government should mandate that, they changed their position. They'd say, well, no, we're going to stay with the drug. I don't think it was

just Republicans in that point. I think it's just the people, 80% were for more gun control when it came to background checks. But if you said, should the government pass legislation on this, then it dropped, I think, 30 points or something like that. But here's my bigger point, is that we're not really arguing over issues. We're arguing over identity. And I think that's one thing. Like them or, hey, that Trump played into is he played into our identity. And he said, your team's losing and I'm going to help you win. I know this will infuriate people who are on the right and probably pretend to hate identity politics.

But there has arguably never been a greater master of identity politics as far as the presidential races go than Donald Trump. Oh, both sides are playing identity politics. Oh, they're both playing identity politics. Because that's what you have to do to win. It's the only way. identity. We're arguing over identity. But then remember at the beginning of this, we talked about how people are living more separately. There's a sort and people are living around people who are like them, vote like them, think like them, look like them. Well, what that leads to is that we don't

know people who are different than us. And so we can cock these crazy ideas about them. It's the rattlers and the Eagles. So you go back to the Rattlers and Eagles. And they end it by telling them that they're going to work together against a common enemy. And when they do that, then the rattlers and eagles, they start to get along better. They needed a bigger enemy. But without that bigger enemy, they needed a Soviet Union. Exactly right. And so you see this when we begin to assume the worst about our enemy. There have been a number of examples of this, but there have been some studies. Just for example, Democrats assume that 50%, only 50% of Republicans believe that racism still exists in America. So if you ask the average Democrat, hey, half of the Republicans,

they think that racism exists. The other half, they don't. The truth is, 80% of Republicans believe that racism still exists in America. So as much as Virginia Heffernan might think that her Trump-supporting neighbor is in denial of racism, he may very well, in fact, is very likely to be in the 80%. He'd say, oh, no, there still is a problem with racism in America. I love this one. You ask Democrats, what percentage of Republicans make $250,000 or more? And the Democrats think that 44% of Republicans make $250,000 or more. And the answer is 2%. I actually don't know if that would be numerically possible.

They're probably enough people to make it over $250,000 to do that. So this works both ways. For example, Republicans believe that only 50% of Democrats are proud to be Americans. Only half of them are proud to be Americans. The other half hate America. The other half of obviously hate America. The reality is that 80% of Democrats are proud to be Americans. be Americans. Here's another one. Republicans think 46% of Democrats are black. The reality is

25%. Now, the point isn't whether that's good or bad necessarily. The point is that we don't know each other because we have these mega identities around politics, race, religion, because we've gone through the big sort, we tend to live around people like ourselves and we don't know people who are different than us. Now, I had an advantage in that, as I've shared before, I was a bit more conservative growing up in a bit more of a democratic liberal home. I know lots of people who are Democrats and liberals growing up, and I know them now. And while I don't consider myself a liberal or a leftist, I respect people who are liberal. I think they're smart.

They got a lot of good ideas. They're probably right in some areas that I'm wrong in. I also know a lot of people who are super conservative, and I say the same thing about them. But people like me who grow up with a foot in different worlds are because, more and more unusual, not rare, but a little bit more unusual. It's interesting you say that. We've never really talked about this, but I grew up with two parents who were on different sides of the aisle. Neither one of them were extreme right or extreme left, but one tended to the left, the other tended to the right. And that shaped my political identity, because I've never kind of thought that it would

be a normal thing to buy into one party wholeheartedly. How could I do that when both my parents are on either side? But like you just said, that's increasingly rare. So let's pull this out of our personal experience. One of the problems is that because we have these mega identities, they become fully aligned with each other, which simply means that if you are a evangelical Christian, there's just a good chance that the people you live around in your neighborhood, the people who your kids are friends with, they are probably largely conservative, and they share your views, your political ideology on a lot of things. And the same thing can go if you're on the left. Now, there are people who cross the boundaries. So a great example of this would be if you had a

black Republican. Now, we know that. that the majority of black people are not Republicans. And we know that the black populace does not make up a large proportion of Republicans. So when this black Republican is in a conservative circle, he's going to be probably one of the only people who has any connection to the black community. Conversely, when he's in the black community where most people are left-leaning, he's going to be around people who have almost no connection. They don't know many people who are conservatives. And so he's someone who's living in both worlds at once. And those kinds of people are growing increasingly, increasingly rare. And yet, I think that we need those kinds of people. In fact,

I would go so far to say that Christians should seek to be those kinds of people in our political environment. Now, obviously what I'm not saying is that I can become a black Republican. I am a white man. However, what I can do is seek to deconstruct my political identity, to realize that if I am buying into a tribalistic political identity, that I'm buying into something that I don't think Jesus really wants us to have anything to do with. One way that I've practically tried to do this is I can name very easily specific areas where I agree with people on the left and where I agree with people on the right. I find it so interesting when I meet people who struggle. In fact, the gal we've been talking about Liliana Mason who wrote this great book on Civil

Agreement. She is asked on a podcast, can you name any areas where you disagree because she's on the left where you disagree with liberals? And ironically, she couldn't do it. She gives a very bizarre answer that's nothing to do with politics. In the exact same way, she's giving advice for how we can get over our tribalism. And in the midst of her answer, she very clearly says that black people are at risk from Trump supporters. Now, I don't think that's a true statement. Maybe it was Virginia Heffernan, who was really on that podcast. It was just fascinating to me because are there Trump supporters who might actually be a danger to black people?

Yes, of course that's the case. But does that mean that most or a majority are? I tend to think probably not. Probably not. No, it's insane. It's insane to say something like that. And so we need to be people who can deconstruct those political identities and say, you know what, I'm not going to let my life be sorted by my politics.

My relationship sorted by my politics? Nothing. One of the things that she mentions in the book that I think is maybe an antidote to some of this is that you're around people who are different than you. So I would encourage you to seek out people who are different and don't argue. Just listen. Just ask questions. And I think what you're going to find out is that they are good people. They have the same concerns

that you do. How am I going to pay my mortgage? What school should I put my kids in? I got a sick family member and I want to see them, but COVID is here and how do I navigate that? They've got the same concerns that you do. And you might disagree with them on politics, but you agree with them on so much more. And that should almost always be the case in a church. It's one of my favorite things about being at the crossing. While we might have majorities in certain political categories, it is not hard for me to find people who disagree with me politically here, and to have a relationship which is rooted in our mutual love for Jesus so we can respect each other and honor each other and listen to each other that allows us to hear each other's political perspectives. I'm in a small group right now.

Guys in my small group do not agree on everything politically, and I love it because we'll talk about politics, and sometimes it'll get a little bit heated, but we know what we share so much so that we can press on each other and actually think hard. not just buy into the party line. Another possible antidote to polarization that she mentions is the willingness of leaders to kind of watch their language about how they talk about the other side. And kind of in a sense, maybe police that language of their followers. To say, hey, be careful.

Let's don't label. Let's don't name call. Let's don't denigrate. So it's that great moment in the election between McCain and Obama, where a woman stands up in a town hall that McCain's hosting and says that she doesn't trust Obama, that he's an Arab. And McCain just says back to her, no, look, he's a good guy, decent guy. And we have policy difference, political differences, but this isn't about his character. And I wonder if there's opportunities for you. When you're in conversations and people are

beginning to denigrate the left or the right, make fun of people, run them down, if there's a place for you to say, well, we disagree on things, but let's be careful about the language we're using. These people aren't our enemies. They are our fellow citizens. They are people who we go to school with and go to the grocery store with and need to work with in order to form a better community. And maybe if one of them wants to come over and shovel your driveway, you'll be okay with that too. So if someone says to you, Trump supporters are a danger to black people, maybe you resist and say, I know a lot of Trump supporters who I don't think would do anything dangerous or violent to someone of color.

Or if someone says, all Democrats are baby killers. who hate life. You say, we disagree significantly about the issue of abortion, but I don't think calling them baby killers who hate life at all represents their character, their desires, or what they even want from abortion. One other practical idea in the midst of this is just to use the power of your imagination. If you're walking down the street, and let's say you're a conservative who's prone to think well of someone who's dressed up in their car heart, they look like a farmer, but you're predisposed to maybe judge someone who's a little hipstery looking. I got their professor. Patrick.

Look, going out, you're judging me. When you see that person, imagine them like the opposite. So when you see the professor walking out of the street, imagine them in the clothing of a farmer. And see if just that little imaginative stance of trying to think about them as someone different changes how you think about them. And, of course, you can reverse this. If you judge people on the right and you see the professors out of there, someone who I could agree with, imagine them the flip-flop way. The point here is use your imagination to think about people differently, to put them into categories that you can actually respect and see the best in. So you're saying if somebody comes up.

over to shovel my driveway and they have a Trump bumper sticker and I'm triggered by that. I should just imagine it's a Biden bumper sticker. Yeah, turned it into a Biden bumper sticker and then think through what that might represent in me. Again, anyone with any bumper stickers or no bumper stickers is welcome to come shovel my driveway. You know what if I put, should I put a Trump and a Biden sticker on my car? Ooh. I don't know. I've never thought of that.

They wouldn't know what to do. Maybe you should put the Trump sticker on the right and the Biden sticker on the left. or flip-flop them, just really mess with people's minds. So here's the bottom line. I think that Virginia Heffernan and her neighbor have a lot more in common than she would realize. I bet they'd enjoy each other's company. I bet that they have a lot of the same values, the same concerns, and I bet they have a lot

of differences. But if they would take the time to get to know each other instead of attack each other in the media, well, I think that we would have a better world to live in, a better country, a better community. What can you and I do to promote? promote that kind of unity, real unity, not the kind of unity that says that when we all agree, then we'll be unified, but the kind of unity that says, I respect you and can learn from you, even when we have significant disagreements. I'll talk well of you. I will try to represent

your views well. And I hope that you'll do the same for me. I'll do nice things for you if you won't write bad stories about me in the paper. The Apostle Paul said, love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Jesus was the incarnation, the embodiment of love. And when we treat our neighbors well, we will endure where we disagree. We will believe the best about them. We will bear through the relationship and hope for the best. That's what love looks like, and that's what Jesus calls us to.

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