About a year into the Trump presidency, the level of anger and hatred in the United States was starting to get to me. I wanted to promote the idea of people talking respectfully to each other about issues instead of jumping straight to hatred and yelling.

I set up a little website to promote kindness in political discussion (it was at letreasonwin.org), but a few years later, even though the divisiveness had gotten even worse, I took the site down.

Rather than just deleting all the content, I moved the content here to a blog post. So here it is: what remains of my glorious [and, admittedly, incredibly naive] “Let Reason Win” campaign.

Let Reason Win!

Politics & religion don’t have to divide us. It’s time to stop arguing and start getting along.  This isn’t about us vs. them. It’s about working together to improve the world we all share. Here’s how it works, in four steps:

1. Chill: Be Kind

Let’s dial things down a notch and chill out!
In every facet of life, a good approach is to be kind. Here’s a brief article about how being kind is good for you, and here’s a piece from the National Review on how kindness can make political discussions more productive.

2. Listen: Get Out of Your Box

If you stop and listen to others, you may find some areas where you agree.

Check out how folks in other countries see things, even if you don’t speak their language. Check out English Online International Newspapers from Inkdrop News. (Be sure to see their US newspapers: from conservative, centrist, and liberal positions.)

3. Discuss: Play Nice

Debate and discuss instead of yelling and demonizing: it’s the only way to move forward.

Here’s a Harvard Business Review article, How to Talk Politics at Work Without Alienating People. There’s also an article put out by the TED folks called How to talk about politics constructively. Finally, here’s a handy LifeHacker piece with steps you can take to have a rational political discussion with friends and family. And here’s another article on managing difficult political conversations without it getting too stressful.

4. Learn: Is it True?

Let’s learn from each other and talk about how we can coexist.

Don’t contribute to the “fake news” madness! Get the facts — especially if it’s a viewpoint that you don’t share. Check the facts behind memes and quotes on Snopes. Dig even deeper into the facts by going to FactCheck.org, which is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and is considered a good, unbiased resource.