How do we get to unity in a state like Kentucky, where conspiracy theories hold strong?
New President Joe Biden gave a pretty good spiel about unity in his inaugural address, touting the need to “join forces, stop the shouting and lower the temperature. For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos.”
Uh huh. We live in Kentucky, where our governor, who set up one of the most efficient COVID-19 testing systems in the country, is facing impeachment charges for executive overreach. And according to Chris Kenning’s exhaustive story on three counties in Eastern Kentucky, a slew of people are so convinced of election fraud, they said they would never recognize Biden or vote again. A group of Kentucky Republican leaders are trying to punish Mitch McConnell, (Mitch McConnell!!) because he 1) finally acknowledged that Biden won and 2) actually called the former president out for inciting the attack on the U.S. Capitol. According to social media, a lot of Kentuckians think we are about to descend into Soviet-style communism at any moment. Some of our residents joined the attack on the U.S. Capitol for reasons that had little basis in reality.
We still seem to have plenty of outrage and chaos. Each side has its own set of facts. Unity seems .... far away. So for some tips to get this hallowed land, I called an expert, Dr. Jenny Rice, a University of Kentucky rhetorical studies professor and the author of “Awful Archives: Conspiracy Theory, Rhetoric and Acts of Evidence,” about how to start these kinds of conversations when two sides seem so far apart.
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“Conspiracy theorists often have a self-sealing world view,” Rice said. “For most people, sometimes our world views get poked by something, where you pause or change your mind, and that is scary and very uncomfortable. But if we get to a point where nothing can poke, that’s when we say they are ‘far gone’ because there is no way to engage, to have our minds changed or have a real conversation.”
Rice uses the example of Ashli Babbitt, who was a well-documented QAnon conspiracy theorist killed at the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6. After her death, however, numerous people on social media called Babbitt and the whole attack a false flag operation by Antifa, despite law enforcement evidence to the contrary.
Opening up the conversation requires a certain amount of vulnerability. “You have to be able to say, the possibility exists that I might change my mind,” Rice said. “But we’re seeing people who have really doubled down on not allowing themselves to be vulnerable at all.”
Well, for one thing, they’ve been led for four years by someone who would do anything to get out of admitting he was wrong about anything.
“So one of the things I found at the end of my research, as painful as it sounds, is that sometimes debating isn’t always going to work out the way we would hope,” Rice said. “If you’re talking to someone who doesn’t have the willingness to be the slightest bit wrong, it’s not going to get very far.”
Generally people are more likely to change their minds because of personal experiences, rather than someone telling them they’re wrong. Sometimes it’s because they begin to understand that a perceived threat is not so threatening.
So that might mean that instead of a Twitter clapback telling someone how stupid they are, engage in a larger idea, Rice said. “It’s shifting from this idea of debate to one of engagement” on topics like “poverty, the systemic gutting of education, racial histories. That’s where we need to address issues, not just this one guy who said this crazy thing.”
Speaking of which, the one guy who said the most crazy things, who lied every day in every way, has flown off into a Florida sunset. The new guy won’t be as addictive or interesting, but he also won’t lie in big, provable ways.
Here’s the rest of what Biden said: “Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path. Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war. And we must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.”
In the meantime, all we can do is lower the temperature in our own little ecosystems, whether on social media or with our friends and neighbors. Unity is a big, elusive goal. So while I think it’s a ridiculous waste of time and a political stunt to try to impeach the governor, maybe I could try to understand the point of view of someone who is scared and angry that their business was partially closed because of COVID-19 restrictions. In return maybe that business owner could try to understand why closing restaurants and bars is standard public health procedure in a pandemic.
Maybe we should start smaller: A willingness to say I was wrong or hear another side’s point of view may be all we can hope for right now.
