Most of us, including me, live inside a media bubble. Jessica Tarlov, my Raging Moderates co-host, works across media bubbles. To say I’m in awe of how Jessica, the lone liberal voice on The Five, engages with her conservative colleagues at Fox News is an understatement. She appears unafraid, but as she writes in her book, I DISAGREE, fear doesn’t go away. You just decide it’s not going to stop you. Wise words.
I asked Jessica to share the following excerpt from her book, as I believe she understands better than most of us, or at least me, how to metabolize rage without letting it curdle, as well as where to find calm without falling into complacency. Her answer, in short: get louder about your convictions, gentler with your people.
Life is so rich,
On Raging Moderates, I ask my guests the same closing question: What’s one thing that makes you rage, and one thing you think we should all calm down about?
Every week, I think about how I’d answer. Sometimes it’s a frivolous frustration, like the jockeying for overhead bin space on an airplane. Other times, I’m raging about something deeper — maybe American citizens being detained by ICE.
When I ask about what we should calm down about, it’s the same pattern. Sometimes it’s a minor frustration with my kids, and other times I’m considering something more meta.
Right now, the thing that makes me rage is fear, or more particularly, the feeling so many of us have that we can’t overcome our fears. When I started at The Five, facing four conservatives and millions of viewers who might not agree with me, I’d wake up with my stomach in knots and rehearse arguments in my head, terrified I’d say the wrong thing.
But eventually I learned the fear doesn’t go away. You just decide it’s not going to stop you. You learn to live with it. To feed off the energy and, hopefully, to find a way to express it that doesn’t sap your strength, but makes you stronger. When your fear is harnessed, no matter what it’s about, you become a more complete, self-aware person.
That’s what I want for you. Not to be unafraid — fear is a rational response to the challenges ahead. But to decide that you’re not going to let that fear keep you on the sidelines of whatever challenge is making you tense.
And what is the one thing we should all calm down about?
Each other.
I know that sounds simple. Maybe even naive. But good people have flaws. It can be hard to see the humanity in people whose politics feel so foreign to yours, or imagine bonding with those who excuse or, worse, endorse behavior that’s antithetical to yours. But those same people can be loving parents, generous neighbors, and devoted friends. The reverse is true as well. People with the “right” politics can have serious personal failings. If we demand perfection from everyone, we end up alone.
And loneliness? That’s what’s really killing us.
It’s also okay to listen to bad ideas. In the past decade on Fox, I’ve been exposed to a lot of conservative thinking that I can get on board with, or at least peacefully co-exist with. But I’ve also heard arguments that range from misguided to flat-out wrong. Conspiracy theories dressed up as facts. Policy positions held up by vibes alone. Being exposed to those arguments didn’t convert me. It didn’t shake my core principles or change my vote. Actually, it’s been the opposite. Listening to bad ideas has taught me what people fear, what they believe in, what they know and don’t know, and sometimes — just sometimes — how I might change their minds. The weakest arguments are the easiest to dismantle. The strongest are actually worth wrestling with.
But the biggest reason we need to calm down about each other is that the world is less scary when we’re together. I’m lucky to have people I can share my thoughts and beliefs with. Fewer and fewer Americans can say the same. Some loneliness is imposed on us — by work, distance from family, health, circumstance. But some of it is voluntary. We hide from one another when things get tense. We ghost friends, skip family dinners, mute people on social media.
Politics matters. Of course it does. But the most meaningful parts of life — love and loss, opportunity and disappointment, triumphs and mistakes — are rarely related to a new law or Truth Social post. That’s true even for me, and I live and breathe this stuff.
What all those meaningful moments have in common is that they’re shared with other people. My father squeezing my hand on my wedding day even though he could barely stand. My husband, Brian, making me laugh when I wanted to cry. My daughters’ faces when they figure out how to do something they thought was impossible. Random acts of kindness from Fox viewers who disagree with almost everything I say but still sent me those baby blankets when Cleo was born.
Remembering that calms me down more than anything.
So yes, rage when you need to. Fight for what you believe in. Use your voice. Show up prepared with facts and conviction.
But don’t forget that the person across from you — whether across the Thanksgiving table or across the cable news split screen — is a person. Flawed, complicated, sometimes infuriating, but still human.
That’s not weakness. That’s strength. And it’s the only way forward.
– Jessica Tarlov
P.S. You can pre-order I DISAGREE: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends, and for those of you in the New York area, there are still a limited number of tickets available for my Conversation with Scott at 92NY on Wednesday September 16 at 7pm.
Well said. Thank you for sharing your insights.
Well said. Thank you for sharing your insights.