"Love Each Other or Die." Thoughts on the election from Patton Oswalt, Jon Pearson, DH Lawrence, and Me, after 3 Years of Living in Costa Rica
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North Carolina, is a real Battleground State!
Hello listeners and readers.
It’s October 25th, 2024, less than two weeks from the election. Two years ago we moved from Costa Rica to North Carolina to be closer to family, and now we find ourselves in a true “battleground” state. If you don’t know what that means, I’ll tell you. It means you leave the house and drive past sign after sign after sign, promoting divergent political candidates. One for Trump/Vance, one for Harris Walz. T/V, H/W, T/V, H/W… ad naseum, all the way until you get to the state lines.
I’ve never really lived in a swing state before, and this isn’t easy for me. I feel like I should be talking to more people and trying to change their minds, flip a few of those signs to “my side,” but it’s difficult. Frankly, it’s difficult to see the signs for the other side sometimes and to know I am surrounded by people who’s ideas are so different from my own.
My cousin, the writer, Jon Pearson has written about his experiences phone banking, and what it means to talk to America (you can find that below). My favorite comedien, Patton Oswalt, had some hilarious insight about phone banking, which he shared on Jimmy Kimmel.
Here’s what Patton Oswalt learned from phone banking.
Some people don’t even want to talk to anyone on the “other side.”
But other people feel like talking to those who differ from them is a total waste of time. The other day I was with a friend and we drove together past a big red pickup truck that had a Trump sign draped over it for all the world to see. My friend pointed to it and said, “Do you really think that person is a good person, worth talking to?” She purposefully slowed down the car we were driving to give the pickup truck the finger as we passed.
“He’s probably the kind of person who comes home from work and kicks his dog.” She said. “The kind of person who tells Native American congresswomen to go back to where they came from, and believes that teachers are turning our frogs into space lazers by putting critical race theory in the water.”
The truth is, I know how she feels. I too have flipped off a lot of flags the last few months. I’ve made a lot of assumptions about people based on what they put up on their lawns. I’ve made a lot of snap judgments.
For a long time I lived in my own bubble, where I mainly talked with people who were like me and believed as I believed, politically. I made assumptions about other people because I didn’t know them at all.
Then I moved to Costa Rica, where I was surrounded by people with differing political opinions.
Costa Rica is a land of differing opinions
In small-town Costa Rica, people learn to depend on one another. Your neighbor is your neighbor, and also your home security system, your stand-by pet sitter, the person who has a spare copy of your keys.
Unlike in L.A., where, if you don’t like someone you can easily avoid them, in a small town like Playa del Coco, where we lived, you would inevitably see the same people over and over again, whether you liked them or not. They’d turn up in the coffee shops, at the grocery store, even walking on the beach you would be bound to run into them. So it gave everyone an incentive to be nice to each other, in spite of differences.
And people get to know each other as people, not walking political beliefs. Usually I wouldn’t find out a person’s affiliation until I had been friends with them for weeks. In that time, you would see a person doing all kinds of regular things, engaging in several acts of kindness, opening doors for others, feeding extra food to stray dogs, giving money to the homeless, then they would drop into conversation that Barack Obama is a facist who forced health care on the world against its will. Or they’d say, after loaning you their car for the weekend, that they think the vaccine causes you to become magnetic, or that they weren’t getting the vaccine, but had just ordered horse medicine online from Florida and would give that a try instead.
After Joe Biden was elected, one Costa Rican man actually asked me “Do you think he stole the election, ‘cause that’s what I heard from Trump.”
My husband had a great way of dealing with people who had differing political views, which is a tactic he called “changing the subject.”
I developed another tactic called “Drink until I can’t feel my face.”
This is what psychology tells us about forming and unforming opinions
Either way, it got me thinking about some of the books I’ve read in humanistic psychology, and the psyche books I’ve read since then. I got into psychology because I wanted to know how it is that so many people make so many seemingly bad decisions. I spent two years studying the topic and everything I have learned can be summed up like this.
Our brain is badly designed.
Truly. One of the books that has most helped me understand this is called Why God Won’t Go Away, which isn’t just about “God,” but about the “neurobiology of belief.” The authors of the book point out that getting people to believe something, even something totally unreasonable, is very easy. You just tell them the thing you want them to believe over and over again, preferably when they are very young, before they can develop any opinions of their own. After that, they’ll take the belief in as part of their identity, and will actively reject any information to the contrary.
The brain, rather than being a device to help you understand the world is actually a device that helps you feel safe with the world, and those are two totally different things. One tells you truths that may be frightening, causing you to question everything you know, make big changes, sacrifice for others, and start revolutions. The other tells you really comfortable lies that allow you to sleep at night.
Some people think I’m being too nice, but honestly, what is the other option?
Some people I know think this is too gentle an interpretation. That if we want to make big changes in society we should shun anyone who supports beliefs we find repulsive. We should have a zero tolerance policy for hatred and biggotry and those who would commit violence. Well, maybe we should, but my question is, “then what?” We do actually live next door to people whose opinions are maybe reprehensible to us, and we can’t logistically deport them all out of the country. We also can’t shun them into changing their minds. As D. H. Lawrence wrote in his poem, September 1st, 1939, on the eve of WWII, “We must love one another, or die.”
I lived in Playa del Coco for almost a full year during the pandemic. By the time the restrictions lifted, I was so starved for social interaction I would have made friends with a monkey who threw its own feces at me, if I thought we could communicate. And I didn’t have to go that far. A lot of the folks who I would come to realize had differing views from me also had plenty of things in common with me.
Some people are monsters. Most are just misinformed.
They weren’t actually monsters, most of them, most of the time.
I understand that some people have certainly proven themselves to be monsters in the past few years. Some people really should be shunned for their actions. I’m not denying that. I’m not suggesting we all make friends with people who hurt us or pose a danger to ourselves and those we love. I’m definitely not saying we all should keep quiet and hold our opinions to ourselves either. I think recognizing our common humanity is the basis we need for having good conversations, conversations that might actually help people gain new information and new perspectives. I’m not the only one who believes that. Here’s a useful article on how to best have conversations with people who disagree with you on politics.
But I do want to say, for the most part, a lot of the people I’ve met who are on different sides of the aisle, are relatively normal. In Coco, we were able to live together, walk on the beach together, and work together on common issues like who would bring the beer to the potluck and who would bring the bottle opener and who would be the designated driver and take everybody home.
They were not actually gouls and goblins.
I had a friend in Los Angeles who was very diplomatic about how she assessed things. She would look at someone who believed ridiculous spin or even downright lies, and say to them, “I think you and I get our news from very different sources.”
So when I do go to talk with someone who is thinking about voting for someone who, for me, would be unthinkable to have as president (again), instead of assuming they are morons or monsters, I assume they are listening to very different news sources. I assume that they were told to listen to these types of sources early on in life, before they really knew the difference. I assume they have blinders that are difficult to remove, but that does not deny their humanity.
I keep in mind that often we have many more things in common that bind us together, and I remember that even though we may differ greatly, most of the people I might talk to probably love someone in their life. Probably they have kids they love, or dogs. Probably, at the end of the day, even if we listen to different news sources and vote for different people, if we were all on a sinking ship together, we’d find a way to look past our differences and bail out our boat with the same pail. Or, more realistically, if we were neighbors, we would trust one another to take care of each other’s cats.
Jon Pearson’s “THE GRAND CANYON”
As you know, I’ve been calling the swing states like crazy. I’m getting to know
America on a molecular level, one unsuspecting soul at a time. It requires I be two things: tough and empty. Tough, because people don’t like being interrupted and most people don’t like talking about politics. Empty, because I mostly try to listen and, small and biased as I am, for a jeweled moment, I’m the Grand Canyon—a great big, empty space.
I made eighty-two calls yesterday, and my favorite was to a guy named “Michael” in Michigan, a guy in his twenties. “We’re voting for Kamala, for sure,” he says. “Tell me why?” I ask. He’s a veteran. He and his wife read Project 2025, the whole thing, nine hundred pages. Took them three days. “It scared the shit out of us,” he says. “This thing is out there, and people aren’t even reading it.” I thank him for his service. I thank him and his wife for their diligence. I thank God there are people like them in the world.
On January 30, 1933, Hitler took the oath of office and became chancellor of Germany. That day he promised the people he would honor the constitution. By March, he’d gotten rid of the government entirely and begun building a prison for his political enemies, at a place called “Dachau.” He did what he said he was going to do all along. People didn’t believe him. They thought he was joking. Then people got comfortable. Then it was too late. That’s how Hitler happened. That’s how all Hitlers happen. Bad things happen when people don’t think bad things can happen. That should scare the shit out of all of us. Except, fear alone makes us stupid—and mean. Hitler was incapable of laughter or empathy. Ever see Trump laugh, really laugh? Or show empathy? Like Hitler, intimidation and retribution are the heart of his program. Lincoln, in the worst of times, had humor and compassion.
So, this is a time to be afraid and not afraid. Because fear, blind fear, is dumbass. And worry is a dodge. It’s time to be tough and vast, to realize the only strength that has ever mattered is inner strength. Whatever’s going on outside you—what’s inside you is bigger. I’m the Grand Canyon with hundreds of voices like Michael’s echoing in my head—filling me with the hope and gumption to go on.
Jon Pearson 10-27-2024
jonstuartpearson@gmail.com
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