Reality Check

This isn’t about interviewing, but it is about dialogue.  Specifically, the unwillingness to accept reality that defines how different groups talk to each other.  Democrats, once again, have been repeating their claim to hope that the Republican effort to overturn the Affordable Care Act is “dead.”  Their insistence sounds a lot like their certainty that Hillary Clinton would win the Presidency.

There is nothing wrong with believing in your side.  But, as the old Scottish rhyme goes, “If wishes were fishes, we’d all cast nets.”  In other words, believing it doesn’t make it so.  And when you turn out wrong because your belief accounted neither for history or the determination of your opponents, you end up looking weaker, not stronger.

I can’t think of anything that fires up an opponent faster than considering them stupid or their own passionate cause, dead.  Democrats and those on the left may consider themselves on the right side of morality but their insistence in trying to smash an opposition just as capable as them puts them on the wrong side of reality.  At the very least, those on the left need to remember that, at every turn, their opponents are human, like them.  Thoughtful, like them.  Afraid, like them.  Determined, like them.

There are bad actors on both sides (Hillary’s campaign throwing Bernie under the bus) and good actors (Tillerson, Mathis and Kelly trying to keep their President presidential in the American spirit).  Maybe that makes for a slow moving conversation forward.  Or maybe talks stall.  But by not throwing so much shade (as Sophia Loren is clearly and infamously casting over Jayne Mansfield’s breasts), at least it doesn’t go backwards.