We spent a lot of this conversation talking about political violence, culture-war rhetoric, education, religion, race, immigration, and the endless stream of accusations that seem to dominate American politics. But underneath all of it, we kept coming back to the same problem:
We are spending far too much time arguing about things that aren’t actually happening while ignoring the things that are.
At some point, somebody has to be willing to say, “That’s bullshit.”
If someone asks a politician about children receiving medical operations at school, the appropriate response shouldn’t require a carefully crafted political answer. There aren’t hospitals operating on children in ordinary public schools. The premise itself is false.
So why are politicians answering the question as though it deserves a serious debate?
Because the question is designed to provoke a reaction.
The same thing happens with claims about books somehow turning children LGBTQ, immigrants being responsible for every social problem, or transgender people somehow representing an existential threat to everyone else. These issues can be made to sound enormous when repeated often enough, even when they have little relationship to what most people are actually dealing with every day.
And that’s where the culture war becomes useful.
While we’re arguing about the latest outrage, we’re not talking about grocery bills. We’re not talking about gas prices. We’re not talking about healthcare, housing, education, wages, war, or whether people can afford to build a stable future.
Those are the things people actually live with.
If politicians want to know what matters to their constituents, there’s a remarkably simple solution: talk to them.
Hold town halls. Knock on doors. Listen to people. Ask them what keeps them awake at night.
If they did that, they might discover that most people aren’t spending their evenings worrying that their child is going to walk into school one gender and come home another. They are worried about whether they can pay the electric bill. Whether they can afford groceries. Whether they can fill the gas tank. Whether their job will still be there next year. Whether their healthcare will cover what they need.
Those concerns don’t generate nearly as much outrage.
But they are real.
And that creates another problem: politicians can become trapped inside their own information bubbles. If they aren’t regularly hearing from ordinary people, they can start believing the talking points repeated around them. They can convince themselves that affordability has been solved because the people telling them so are doing well.
Meanwhile, somebody else is standing at the grocery store wondering how the total got so high.
That disconnect matters.
One of the most important questions we can ask about any politician isn’t simply what party they belong to. It’s whether they are actually listening to the people they represent.
Because how can someone effectively fight for the people if they don’t know what those people are experiencing?
We also have to be willing to apply that standard to everyone.
Political accountability cannot mean holding only the other side accountable. Predators, corrupt officials, racists, extremists, and politicians who deliberately spread falsehoods shouldn’t get a pass because they happen to belong to our political tribe. If we’re serious about fixing the system, accountability has to apply across the board.
That also means recognizing when our own side gets something wrong.
We don’t have to agree on every issue. We don’t have to share the same religion, political philosophy, race, sexuality, or cultural background. We don’t even have to like one another.
But we do have to live together.
And that requires something increasingly rare in American politics: the willingness to distinguish between an actual problem and a manufactured one.
We can debate immigration without pretending immigrants are responsible for everything wrong with the country. We can debate education without inventing things happening in schools. We can discuss religion without turning religious belief into a weapon against our neighbors. We can disagree about transgender rights without treating transgender Americans as though they are an existential threat.
Most importantly, we can ask whether any of these arguments actually improve someone’s life.
Because that’s supposed to be the point.
The people we elect aren’t supposed to spend their time manufacturing enemies for us. They’re supposed to represent us.
And if they aren’t listening to us, perhaps the first thing we need to do is stop listening to them.
Call bullshit when it’s bullshit.
Then talk about what’s actually happening.
That might be a surprisingly good place to start rebuilding trust in one another—and in the idea that government can still work for the people.
AI Usage: ChatGPT was used to summarize our conversation, and Gemini was used to generate an SEO image based on it.
