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Why the Worst Thing You Can Say Right Now Is, “Don’t Talk to Me if You Voted for Trump.”
My friend Nancy held an extraordinary series of events this summer. I did not realize how extraordinary they were until I watched the recent violence at the Capitol and realized how deeply divided this country really has become.
Nancy lives in a quiet suburb in Colorado. As the pandemic hit, she and her husband were feeling increasingly isolated. She wished that she lived in a friendlier neighborhood where she actually spoke to her neighbors. So, she decided to do something about it.
An ex-piano teacher, she decided to hold garden concerts twice a month. She would send out invitations to her whole neighborhood, many of whom she had never spoken to and who had never spoken to each other. She would put out chairs in the garden, plug in some speakers, and play for anyone who showed up. Many of her neighbors did.
What was extraordinary about Nancy’s concerts isn’t her music, as exquisite as it was. It was that in the year leading up to the most polarizing election in American history, she got her fiercely Democratic and Republican neighbors to sit down together and actually enjoy talking to each other. Nancy herself was a staunch Democrat and had even disowned many Republican…
