If I’ve learned anything from my political evolution over the past few years—going from a staunch liberal to a committed waffler—it’s this: If you want to be a party-line Democrat or Republican, it’s easy enough. You just have to isolate yourself from opposing viewpoints.
I had a much stronger political identity before I knew how much I didn’t know. Then I became a reporter. I went out into the country NPR told me about. And I found that, well, things are a little more complicated out there.
My latest foray into America as it actually exists is our new special election series: Swing State Debates.
Each week, I’ll host a conversation between a diverse assortment of Americans on some of the most contentious issues of the day, from foreign policy to race relations to the economy. These debates are not exactly kumbaya. But if you are a devoted partisan, you’ll be disappointed to learn that the participants don’t divide into the neat camps you might think exist. Nor is it always obvious—at least to me—which side of each issue has the moral upper hand. What you will find is a passionate, knowledgeable, and sometimes ambivalent cast of characters. In other words, they’re just like America.
Tune in weekly—a new episode will drop every Tuesday from now until Election Day—to find out whether the moderating influence of one politically ambivalent journalist can accomplish the impossible: an easing of tensions between two opposing tribes. (Spoiler alert: Results varied wildly.)
Our first episode, which you can watch above, will likely raise hackles for its location alone: Florida. I can already hear some subscribers complain “Florida’s not a swing state!” as they scroll to the comments section and roll up their sleeves. But if a new poll is right, the presidential race in Florida is tighter than you might imagine. So let’s call it a swing-ish state.
But, more to the point, Florida has been the site for one of the nation’s most antagonistic culture wars: the battle over what we teach our children—about American history, sexual identity, gender, and race. Under Governor Ron DeSantis, a series of recent laws seek to dismantle progressives’ perceived stranglehold on American pedagogy. The most controversial of these was the Parental Rights in Education Act (widely reported as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill) as well as a law that enables parents to force school libraries to remove books they feel are “inappropriate.”
Florida is also where Tiffany Justice, co-founder of parent advocacy group Moms for Liberty, lives. She was one of the participants in our debut debate—a conversation featuring teachers and parents, Democrats and Republicans on every side of this issue.
So off we go to the swing-ish state of Florida to sort out American education! (Next week: Arizona, where I’ll attempt to bridge the divide between border hawks and Dreamers seeking citizenship.)
This series is presented with support from the David Merage Foundation and Evoke Media. For more information, please visit weareevokemedia.com.
As well as hosting Swing State Debates, Ben Kawaller is the host of The Free Press series Ben Meets America! To learn more about that series, click here.
And to support our work, become a Free Press subscriber today:
I find that keeping up with a liberal news source such as the NYT pushes me further and further from being a Democrat. This is counter to Ben's point that one confirms their tribalism by sticking to their echo chamber. The NYT is a 'news leader' only for the close minded on the left. I read it to see the marked bias in their reporting and the vast majority of their opinion contributors. It's a great lesson in tactics such as:
-- Slanting the news by omitting all stories that make their opponents look good.
-- Word choices in headlines or copy that convey judgment.
-- Limiting sources and interviews to friendly experts rather than across the spectrum.
-- Outright falsehoods.
-- Quoting out of context.
-- Excessive use of weasel words/phrases: 'experts claim...', 'some accuse...', 'might'. This gives the impression that speculation is fact.
Also, readers comments are a good sample of their readers' cognitive distortions.
I actually stomached the first 20 minutes of this drivel. The public education system has been hijacked by the left. The books that are being used and taught in our schools are abhorrent for K-5 classrooms. If you want to prepare voters for Nov 5th, use economy, immigration, foreign policy as relevant topics. Local school boards are packed with lefties. The LGBTQ community is .1% of our population, yet that's all we hear and see on MSM and our alphabet news networks. Let's let kids be kids and go thru their maturation process. The psychosis of our youth is at an all-time low. Kids are in therapy now more than ever and it's a travesty. All because LGBTQ and DEI are being jammed down our throats by the left, the media and our hijacked teachers and businesses.