Red Stater's Meet n Greet - what worked and didn't

First off I wanna thank Hamlet for thinking of this project and doing all the hard work to get it off the ground. Through out it all he was courteous, kind, and fair!

What I thought Didn't Work:

1) We mostly missed the goal as, at least what I thought the goal was, of trying to understand each other as people with rich and complex perspectives instead of as "dumb evangelical red staters" and "pompus hedonistic blue staters".

2) The conversation was pretty much just about the war in Iraq, but even on that one topic I don't think anybody had a good chance to express their personal reasons for "believing the war was justified despite civilian casualties", "believing the war was just despite no WMD being found", "believing that Saddam should have staid in power despite his policy of torture, rape and genocide" or "believing that Saddam was no kind of threat post 911, despite the assessment of intelligence agencies world wide and for the last two administrations." I didn't want to heard the first half of those sentences again, I wanted to hear people say how they got past the "despite".

3) The question, answer, and rejoinder format didn't really give insight into the people. For example, if asked "Do you like SL?", and I answered "I think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread!", the rejoinder would often se something like "Don't you know CNN reported that sliced bread has caused 58% of all kitchen accidents in the last 30 years?!" or "Sliced bread? How can that possibly compare to the wheel?!" The last word would be an out of context "fact" or a sweeping generalization. I would've liked it better if each rejoinder was limited to a question about an individual Red Stater's personal reasoning and gave them a chance to reply.

4) Q&A with the audience was a mess. Interesting questions like "As a Democrat I felt that Kerry and the party are going too left, how about you?", or "I've heard all this for/against war stuff before, what can you tell me that's new about your personal perspective?" got totally lost. Also *some* people in the audience thought it would be funny to ask inflammatory questions and keep twisting the replies of people. Please stop hurting America!

What worked well:
1) The panelists were great! Courteous, articulate, passionate. I'd love to talk to them again anytime! They weren't interested in starting fights, but explaining themselves. I think they all also deserve a round of applause and

2) Hamlet's intro and questions were fantastic. His maps and graphics really showed how false the stereotypes of Red and Blue were, and his questions really showed how false easy generalizations like "Bush made Europe hate America" are.

3) The event really showed how people people think, and it showed me we that we are really honestly divided in understanding of each other. The politicians, reporters, pundits - basically anybody who profits from these stereotypes of red and blue - succeeded this election. The war in Iraq *was* the important issue for people. One out of three red staters, two out of five blue staters didn't think that Micheal Moore / Ann Coulter style extreme attack pundits were bad for the country. At least one of the Blue staters really believed Farenheight 911. None of the Blue staters could think of single sincerely nice thing to say about the President, while only one Red stater said anything nice about Kerry (though another Red stater agreed).

I enjoyed it a lot even though I thought we missed the mark. I wish we could do more events of this kind, really focused not at converting each other, but at understanding each other with a commitment to completely respect our disagreements at the outset.

Thank you everybody who came, and participated constructively!

Had to miss it because of computer problems.

There are lots of kind things to say about George Bush. In fact, he has a realistic style of government that the populism of John Kerry simply can not match. He has a vision (though one that will be tough) for social security, he has a realistic position on outsourcing, he believes in an ownership society. While not 'safe, easy, status quo' visions, they are visions that John Kerry could not match. As a domestic president, George Bush is far superior to John Kerry.

There are problems with GB, I personally have difficulty with, such as the intolerance to Gays. But that's a personal faith issue and not one easily discussed. Also, his reputation on the environment is very poor as well as his take on stem cells.

But those are minor issues compared to the big ones, and wouldn't have swayed my support.

The issue that swayed my support is the big issue: the war in iraq, which is simply a matter of life and death. Civilians are getting killed and murdered in Iraq as a result of this war. Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, daughters. To characterize it as anything but a matter of life and death is a profound lack of empathy for what's happening down on the ground, in the buildings blowing up .. the car bombs mutilating children, the terrorists angered to point they are executing massive amounts of Iraqiis.

How can this ever be exusable? If John Kerry or George Bush screwed up the economy and the world went into a depression - that would be exusable. You can pull out of a depression. You can not pull out of death.

There were solutions, while not quick, which would have gradually pushed Saddam out of power. Greater invervention by UN peacekeepers. This was proposed but quickly pushed aside as George Bush was marching to war. To be turned back would have been a great emberassment and clearly war was better than admitting a mistake.

George Bush didn't make the world hate the US all by himself, but he damaged the international reputation of the US enormously. This is not a generalization, and I'm surprised that you characterized it as one.

I truly fear the desire and need to be 'bipartisan' or to be 'balanced and fair'. I am a huge supporter of George Bush but there is no way you can talk about innocent people dying in a balanced or fair way .. I find it sad that attempts were made or feel attempts should be made.

I'm sorry I missed this event; we had inlaws over for dinner last night to celebrate my daughter's fourth birthday. I was skeptical but curious about whether or not this event could be successfully pulled off. I wish I could have been there in person to see what transpired.

Sorry Blaze, I really wasn't trying to make a point!

I just wanted to give an example of what I appreciated about Hamlet's approach and questions. Like I did with the other items I would have put a Red state pat statement up that he challenged but I just didn't remember one.

My hope with this thread was NOT to rehash the issues in the same old forum way, but to congratulate Hamlet, and give some (hopefully) constructive criticism on how this experience could be continued, or a similar one could happen with even greater success!

I think it's REAAAAALLLY important for the moderator in one of these events to be "fair and balanced" AND "impartial" and I think Hamlet did a great job.

I also feel strongly that what we need are events that remind ALL OF US that the other side are reasonable people too who deserve respect. NOT events where we try to win or convince the other side or make ourselves feel good about zinging the other side.

I really don't want to talk about political issues in this thread. I just want to talk about HOW we might talk about our personal political decisions in a way that benefits us all.

Again I'm honestly sorry if my constructive criticism was biased.

Oh I just edited this to add that if you want to "support the generalization" you'll need to take it up with Hamlet because he was the one who (I thought) successfully disproved it. I'd just like ask that we don't take it up here!

I felt that you did have a point .. which was that there should be a bipartisan understanding.

I was trying point out that there is nothing bipartisan and there is no balanced perspective to be had about the war in Iraq.

In fact, to extend my point, the problem with Iraq is exactly people who think there should be a bipartisan or balanced perspective of what's happening over there. It's exactly that element which is letting these people die.

It is those people who oppose the president, but let him get away with what he does because they try to give him a 'fair shake' on Iraq.

I understand, but respectfully disagree with your opinion. I would really appreciate it if we could focus on ways to constructively express and explore our conflicting opinions inside SL rather than in this thread. Thanks!

As one of the panelists, I'll mostly concur with Aestival. For a large part, it degenerated into a rehash of the arguments that we had before the election, rather than a discussion of how we go from here.

I explained why I voted for Kerry, and the Red's did the same for their votes for Bush.

To say some of what I didn't get a chance to say in the 1 or 2 line remarks you can get into a crowded SL chat, I haven't seen the country this polarized since Reagan got re-elected. And as a good Dem, I'm about as depressed now as I was then.

But then... I survied a second term from Reagan, so I'm sure I'll survive a second term from Bush.

On the other hand, there is a scary amount of polarization happening now. Republicans are saying "love it or leave it", and Democrats are saying "screw these fools, this is all f-ed up".

To me, a lot of the polarization is not east/west coast vs. the interior, but rather an urban vs. the countryside divide. Look at the blue states, and you'll see NY is NYC vs. upstate, IL is Chicago vs. downstate, NJ is greater NYC and greater Philadelphia vs. the interior. There truly do seem to be 2 very different views of things, depending on whether you consider a big city a central focus of your way of life, or not.

To put it all in the context of the gay marriage debate, I see the countryside folks getting all up in arms over the whole notion, while the city folks are saying "jeez... give us a break... the queers are part of what make our cities so kewl".

So what's the answer? I dunno...

Maybe we should make the city-folk go live in bum-fuck, Texas for a bit, while we have the country bumpkins come to the cities and deal with traffic and poverty and overworked cops.

But with that all said, I too would like to tip my cap to Hamlet. It was a noble effort, and for the most part, achieved a lot of the goals he set forth.

- Ace

/me shrugs and rolls up sleeves!

Actually I wish we *had* gotten into this because I'm totally a city dweller from the middle of the bluest city in the bluest state on the West Coast. I feel like I have a totally different view with half of my neighbors on half of the issues and the same with the other Half. You'd be surprised how many folks I know know where I live are against gay marriage (including some gay friends!) but still voted for Kerry, and how many are for it and voted for Bush.

All in the same city, brushing elbows, but really rarely speaking out loud about how they disagree with the orthodoxy of the Left and the Right - because, heck, that's what all their friends think!

Another cultural item that happened recently that I think illustrates the divide is what happened with Nicolette Sheridan and Terrel Owens on Monday Night Football this week.

There were news reports of people up in arms over what was shown, while a lot of the people I know and deal with kind of shrugged their shoulders and wondered what the fuss was over the showing of bare female shoulders.

When you see and deal with a lot more sexuality on a daily basis, the dropping of a towel on Monday Night Football doesn't mean squat.

- Ace

Well, Part 1 (of 5) is up now:

http://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/2004/11/red_staters_mee_1.html

There's no way I can run the full transcript in NWN, but I can post it here, if there's enough requests to do so...

(Also feel free to offer corrections/explanations of what was said, in the comments section. Usually, people are talking over each other, so it's sometimes difficult to contextualize who was speaking to whom, and whom was responding to what.)