The rudest thing you can ask an American
On politics, Portugal, and punchy dialogue
“Grandma?” I asked, in a wondering mood.
“Yes?” she responded, drinking her coffee at the kitchen table.
“Who did you vote for for president?”
She looked over at me and paused.
‘‘That,” she said, “Is none of your business.”
With one reprimand, my grandmother taught me an American cultural lesson, and scared the words right out of me. Other than that moment, I don’t remember her ever scolding me. She had me over to play card games, and tell stories, and watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy on the couch while she and grandpa fell asleep in their matching Lazy Boy recliners. She was warm and thoughtful.
Around that same time though, another woman of her age decided to convey a similar etiquette lesson. She used a pointed tone with me when I asked her how old she was.
‘‘Young lady,” she said. “You do not ask adults how old they are. That is rude.”
Not to overdramatize it, but in both cases I felt like I had been slapped unexpectedly. I had no idea I was being rude or overstepping boundaries. I thought I was making casual conversation and bonding with adults.
It wasn’t until I lived in Canada for a time that I understood what it felt like to be on the receiving end of pointed political questions. People I had just been introduced to would ask me about American politics, and not just in general, my particular views. It was deeply uncomfortable and I don’t think they had any idea how much it felt like they had overstepped an ingrained cultural boundary.
Despite what you might think from social media behavior, Americans rarely confront each other personally about who they voted for specifically. You can get clues from the way people talk, or signs in their yard, or overt posturing, but you may not and really don’t know for sure unless you ask, and that is rare.
It’s an unsaid rule that your vote is private — as private as how much you made last year, your social security number, and your favorite sexual position. You only share those things in certain situations, in certain trusted situations, with certain trusted people.
When we were in Scotland and people there asked us, “How could your country vote for Trump?” I tried going around the question by explaining our electoral college system and the difference between the popular vote and the state electors and ended up theorizing about my fellow citizens choices like a political science professor or some sort of pundit. I think I ended up boring the pants off of them and they still didn’t get it. Truly, I didn’t get it either.
My theory about why Americans are so sensitive about this topic is because we’ve been deeply divided for so long, that avoiding the topic is the best way we know how to get along and keep a civil society.
Especially when you live in a small town and people must get along to keep everything running. I’m not saying avoiding difficult conversations actually works to keep the peace (really, I think silence has aided a lot of our division, aided repressive social policies and damaged social justice movements). But we truly (and I mean truly) don’t know how. No one has taught us the language of having conversations like this where everyone comes out a winner. So most people either avoid it altogether or have heated discussions online that do little to convince one another.
The best resource I’ve found on this is a book called Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg where he teaches people how to express how they feel and what they need and practice active listening techniques with people who would normally trigger an anger response.
My theory about why other cultures are so willing to “go there” and ask us what we think or who we voted for is that they are more used to dialogue with their fellow citizens, and genuinely curious about what we think — especially since U.S. policy affects the lives of so many people around the world.
Also, countries with parliamentary democracies have more than two parties to choose from when they vote, which means that they are less likely to be as polarized as we are (although that is not always the case).
The November Elections
I’m gonna admit, I’m uncomfortable writing about this topic (it’s taken me two weeks to write this essay), and you may be wondering what this has to do with our move to Portugal, and you’d be right to ask. So, let me express it in the way Mr. Rosenberg teaches.
Since Roe was overturned, I’ve felt anxious about the loss of women’s reproductive rights in America and concerned that the right to love and marry and be who you want to be would be the next to go. Plus, gun violence here is so depressingly common that it made me wonder what it might be like to live somewhere that had a more peaceful society (for comparison Portugal is rated #6 on the World Peace Index, and the U.S. is #129 (just after Azerbaijan). I need to feel more safe and secure than that.
Honestly, I’ve been in a better mood after this last election because it feels like Americans, by and large, rejected “the crazy” and stood by our institutions, particularly democratic norms. However, in Montana, the crazy is still alive and well. Montanans voted in a Republican Congressman who was an election denier, and voted in a new one that was a former Trump cabinet member who had to resign his cabinet post because he was being investigated for ethics violations.
Still, a challenge to reproductive rights failed here, and hopefully chilled any attempt by the Republican supermajority in our state legislature to change the state’s constitution so that abortion is no longer protected under our right to privacy.
What’s love go to do, got to do with it …
And yet … and yet … love does win the day. There are plenty of people who live here who disagree with me, who vote differently than me, who I would love even if they voted for Attila the Hun. Because it wouldn’t make my life (or theirs) any better if I hated them for their beliefs and because love defies logic or reason. It’s complex, overarching, surprising, and it resists cancel culture.
One of the few people I openly discuss politics with here has known me since childhood. She gave me my first haircut. She sells me my garden plants every spring, and grooms my pets when they need it.
“Where are you moving?” she asked, while swiveling my cat onto her stomach and spraying her with a water bottle.
“Portugal,” I replied.
“Oh yes,” she said, chuckling. “That’s where all the liberals are moving these days.”
She was gently teasing me, although I was a bit taken aback. I didn’t know that I had already become a stereotype.
“We have another liberal friend from here who is planning to move there,” she said. “He just retired. Here let me call him for you.”
So, with one hand untangling my cat’s mats, she used the other to call her friend and leave him a message (prompting me to say hello to him as well on his voicemail) in order to connect us both so that we could share resources about our moves.
Now, that’s love.
You love someone when you help them achieve what they want in life, despite your differences of opinions. You love someone when you wish them well. You love someone when you care.
Turns out, even though she listens to Tucker Carlson and I listen to Rachel Maddow, we agree on a lot of things.
It just took having a conversation to discover it.
Thank you for reading! I really appreciate it, and I look forward to all of your comments. I have plans to start a book club for paid subscribers in January, and to continue building a community here. Stay tuned as more changes are coming to this space.
This is a nice way to approach such a difficult topic. I’ve been thinking recently that maybe we’ve all been fighting our political wars by proxy: one side drives around with American flags and bastardized flags in their trucks, “Let’s Go Brandon” stickers on their tailgate, and the other side puts Black Lives Matter signs out and fly their rainbow flags. We’ve used these shorthand symbols to express our opposition to each other, and I wish we could just all put them away and find our common humanity.
Thanks for this piece. I can relate to so many parts of it. I especially loved this: "Because it wouldn’t make my life (or theirs) any better if I hated them for their beliefs and because love defies logic or reason." I decided to leave Facebook for a while (I'm not sure how long) and one of the things that has prompted me to distance from social media is that I realized I was judging people based on their posts. If they didn't seem to be on the same political side as me, I didn't like them and didn't want to connect with them. Yet, like you say, relationships are so much more dynamic than that. We can find common ground. A while ago, I wrote a few articles for Patheos. What I experienced is that some of those I expected to see, love, and share the articles did not do anything at all (I'm not angry...that's just social media algorithms. It's hard to gain visibility), and a couple of those who I expected would be upset by what I wrote or would perhaps argue with me were telling me how much they loved my writing, and they were the ones sharing it. So, we never really know what to expect. As a fellow Montanan (raised in Butte, living in Missoula), I too am not so thrilled about this election, and I sometimes worry about my rights as a woman being taken away. I like Rachel Maddow too :)