For some reason — let’s say another way to paraphrase “repairing public discourse” is, we want to grow up as a society. We want to be worthy of the moment we inhabit and meet it with our best. We possess a lot of intelligence in our lives, in our families about, for example, that nothing gets any better if people don’t acknowledge mistakes they made, and we don’t embrace that and encourage them to grow, and that you never, ever change anybody’s mind by telling them how stupid they are, ever.
Ms. Kohn:Never.
Ms. Tippett:Ever in history has that happened.
Ms. Kohn:Well, I want to say, to me, the opposite of hate isn’t love. It’s connection. You don’t have to love people to not hate them. You have to see that you have something at your core, a fundamental humanity, a fundamental goodness, that transcends the division. The reason I talk about my Aunt Lucy is, there are people who, when you meet them, when you know them, when I talk to my trolls, you realize that we’re at a point in our society, in our history, where we focus on a very small sliver of our beliefs to fight over. I don’t know about you, but when I see my relatives who I don’t agree with on 100 percent of — first of all, I have a whole bunch of relatives I don’t agree with on 100 percent of political issues. But I don’t see them as — they’re still on my side because we — I don’t know; what do we agree on? Ninety percent of the political issues? Where’s that dividing line? The point is, when I see my Aunt Lucy — all right, maybe we disagree on even more — I still love her. I still care about her. I still know she’s a good person and wants what’s best for me and my family and the country and the world. That is a really good place to be able to start to then talk about what we disagree on.