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Welcome to our mini pod. You guys heard us on the last episode talking about when you're in debate or when you're presenting your position, are you trying to convince someone and or are you just having conversations? So we're going to do a really quick one on this because I think it's a good topic and it was Angela's idea, so let's talk about it.
It Actually it came from something you said, I want to Can we do a wrap around?
Yes, let's do it.
When here tries to convince people of their position, raise your hand, not me.
Both, y'all really okay listening Angela and Andrew are raising a hand.
Yeah, that's true.
Sorry, I think I used again. This is what I'm trying to disassociate myself from the convincing part. But I do I think I still argue with the with the idea of winning people to my perspective, yeah, I think otherwise, what's the point. Yeah, I definitely don't want to be heard that much for the point of just wasting the space. So I do I do think I when I argue, I do think I argue with the intent of bringing more people to my point of view the way I see things, and and and and that kind of thing.
But I will tell you there are conversations that are had where it really is just about understanding better where somebody is and maybe letting them understand my perspective better, but not moving them necessarily to my side. So but I put that in the range of like conversation, and then I put debate and argument in a different category.
What about you, Angelau, yikes, I am. As soon as you said that, I'm like, oh, I really do have a problem here.
I am. I think that I'm always.
Every aspect of your life.
I'm not debating either, But just like I think, I think it comes from two places. One is, I do think that I want to feel heard, But more than feeling hurd I want to feel understood. And so I don't know that I'm trying to convince people to think like me as much as I am trying to convince
them to understand my perspective. So one of the things my mom has always said to me is one of the greatest skills we can learn in life is perspective taking, and so I think that I have honestly spent more time trying to give my perspective and get empathy, support understanding for that than I have placed the same energy in doing that for other people, which is why my mom has probably repeated that to me tons and tons of times. So I need to work on that part
of it. But I do also I'm competitive and I do like to win a debate as well, even if it means me ow in the debate.
So I think I think it's both. It's both.
I'm here tip experience either of you that way. I say that, Yeah, I mean I say for me, I'm never trying to convince anybody. It's like I just don't have space in my spirit for that. And I also consider when that is happening, there's some level of intellectual violence there. If I'm telling you this is how I feel like I would say what you said, Angela, That's all I ever asked to be understood. If you understand
me and you disagree, we Gucci, it's okay. You don't have to agree with me if you have allowed me the space, if we've had a healthy exchange of ideas and ideology.
I'm good with that.
I have an endless, insatiable thirst to learn to understand things. That's really all it's ever about for me. If I've learned something, I want to share it. When people try to convince me of something, I can't lie like, it starts to bother me, you know, because it's it's if I'm saying now, now, if I'm neutral, and you're like, oh, let me pull you to my side. Maybe, But if I've said this is how I feel, and then somebody else is trying to say no, like this is your position on this is wrong.
It's like, Okay, I hear you, but then I've moved on. You know, I don't know.
I don't know what it is, but I don't like it like I because you cannot convince me of something that I don't believe in, or that I believe to be false or I believe to be wrong. Andrew, you and I have had conversations where, well, you guys have seen Andrew throwshade. But we'll be talking and I'll say, well, Andrew, this is my perspective, and I'll go on and on and on and on about something. And Andrew is very thoughtful He's like, hmmm, how incredibly one dimensional.
That's like.
You.
That's a verbatim quote.
That is a verbat Jesus Lord, yes today.
But I don't experience you trying to convince me. You know, you're just like, what.
Do you mean?
I don't think I do. When I understand a person's position, like if they like you've stated where you are, I think my debating is more in the space where there is room for conversion, like oh you, and then if there isn't real I will tell you what I've defaulted to, which is is it possible that a person could reasonably think this? Like is the question I would posit to someone, like, all right, so that I can make sure that I'm
not out of space? Is it possible? Is it reasonable to conclude that a person might might think this, might have a reason to conclude that based off of what the interaction has been. And if I can get you to say yeah, I think that's possible without without cutting me in the next verse, then I'm like, Okay, that's cool. Then we can sit there. But if I'm still looking at you and you're looking at me like I'm an out of spacer, like okay, it just doesn't have a
logical landing for me. Then that becomes hard because I keep going until like, it seems like it's logical that a person could conclude that. But if you think that I'm hearing out of space and that there's no reason for me to have arrived at what I've arrived at by way of conclusion, then you you out of space.
Well here's my question.
Do you guys think this is one place where I feel like we've run up against this ideology, like as a bump, as a point of tension for us. Often on the pod there are moments where I feel like Tiff is like, well, I don't know why they're going to get the undecided voters like these people and if they still don't decide that they have decided, And I'm like, ish, how we gonna win an election if she don't convince
somebody these undecideds. So I think one of the places where I see that made manifest the most is when we're having the conversation about how they grow a base or convince an electorate that this is the right side of the issue, because if you don't grow your position, there's only so many votes you can count. That's limited, So then what do you do if you're not convincing anybody to come along with you.
I don't believe there are that many undecided voters, so I think we're already in disagreement at the premise of it. I think if you're undecided at this point, you're giving yourself permission to vote for Trump or you're trying to find a reason to vote for Vice President Harris. And I think the reason why those things exist are rooted in racism and misogyny every single pannel I've seen, and I personally don't know how, and nor am I interested in meeting a bigot in the middle or trying to
convince a bigot anything about me my humanity. That's democracy. This election, I have found it to be an exercise in futility.
Now.
There was a version of me who likes to debate.
You know, in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, when I first started on television, I used to engage in these debates.
And I'll tell you I don't have the energy for it anymore.
It's just not it's not worth my time to be like, maybe somebody else can do it, but I don't want to do that. I don't even like preaching to the choir. You know a lot of the times we're talking our audience, they know a lot of the things we're saying right now.
I think this is so emblematic. I think this is so us. I think it's so true. Everything Tiffany is saying is predictable as.
Far as he doesn't mean it that way.
He just means as.
The one person here who's run for office, and we know this is actually where this surface is for us. I think most often because I'm like tiff you cannot win an election.
Like yeah, like convincing Angela, you try to convince for sure, So.
As the resident run for what, like, how do you grow a base if you're not convincing nobody?
Well, part of it. We have to suspend with our own beliefs about some things in order to grow a base, because if we approach every person with the assumptions around why it is they are where they are on this thing, there's no hope with it. And so even though I sometimes enter a conversation with a strong belief about where I think somebody might land, I have to be willing at some level to say, you know what, with words
that come out of their mouth. Some of it has to be believable, like at some point something in them is still telling them like, I'm on fenced about this, and maybe there is a if you're on fence about it, then there has to be a way off the fence. Can I present to you a picture that lets you off the fence? And I think for most people, away off the fence is by not making me feel stupid, not making me feel like I am problematic because I
was on the fence to begin with. But even if I felt that at some level, even if I felt that that, I've got to give them a ramp off, because nobody wants to be humiliated, and nobody wants to be browbeat to the position that they're in. They want to get there or they want to feel like they have gotten there through their own sovereignty. That that I own me and I own the way I get to decide, and that takes a little bit more patience, and it requires the suspension of our own beliefs sometimes.
And judgment probably suspended Jack, I got judgment and frustrated now. I think when it comes to local different primaries, but when it comes to this election, I have all the things you said we shouldn't have for undecided voters. If you on the fence about in this election, I don't have the patience, the time to desire none of that. Somebody else. That's somebody else.
And they're honestly, you've gotten there. Honestly, a lot of us have gotten there. Honestly, it's because we've watched these people turn themselves into pretzels trying to be undecided when you're like, we know what this is at the end of the day. And I guess the part I'm saying is that even if I feel like I know where this is at the end of the day, I may not tell you that I think think that you're an
unwinnable and hopeless case. We're gonna give you a way off at some level, and I hope you take it.
I like everything you said until the end because to me it felt like there there was something about it that if I feel like I can't convince then I have lost hope. I'm not talking about somebody that's just like you talked about pretzels. I hate pretzels. You're not
gonna convince me to like pretzels. There's uh, it's pointless. Exactly, you know, but like, but that's a completely different thing than you know, someone who's like, well, I just don't understand why I gotta pay reparations if I didn't do the thing right. I think that I can't convince you.
You don't know what I'm gonna say.
I think I just wanted you to say. I was responding to this moment, which was these Trump voter you know these.
Yeah, I was gonna get there.
I was gonna get there, these that I that maybe you just don't know. So I feel like the convincing is because you need to be educated. And I don't want to do it to your point in a browbeating, judgmental, super hypercritical, or the way to humiliate them.
But I do want to be like, well, can you help me explain this?
Like, we did this interview on Breakfast Club with Byron Donald's and he was getting like dragged for this Jim Crow comment he made, which I thought was ridiculous, like you wouldn't have been able to marry your wife and Jim Crow right, So but I was like, well, can you explain what you meant?
Now?
He explained it, and I was like, okay, that position I actually understand, and part of it I agree with. But at the end of the interview he says make America great again.
I was like, so, back to Jim Crow, we go, huh.
We just so he's a idiot, thank you.
I I agree with that.
But to me, I had to go through the exercise of seeing where your where your logic led you, or maybe it's not your logic, maybe it's you're shorter end of the line, or maybe it's not your shorter than the line. Maybe it's your opportunism. I don't know, but I want to hear it all out for myself.
I was getting wrong with that. I think I've heard it all from my example. I think that's that's part of the talent. Yeah, pretty much like I grew up in Atlanta. I know how southern white folks think. I was born in Ohio. I know how min and western white folks, and I don't have that kind of curiosity. And for self hating black people, I definitely don't have no curiosity.
We gotta convince some of them were.
On that note, we gotta convince Nick. Let us go a few.
Gotta go, all right, I got zero moments left for any of this.
I want to talk about this some more, especially at the end of this election. Hopefully the another mem is what we wanted to be and we can talk about who she ended up convincing. We can maybe see that in exit pulling data. I love it five seconds from now. Yeah hopefully all right.
Thank you guys for tuning into this mini pod. Be sure to like, leave us a review and tell your friends We drop mini pods every Monday. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you back here next Thursday.
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