An infantry team leader told me Muslims saved his life. A restaurant owner who prays outside abortion clinics said he doesn't want a theocracy. A software engineer with Confederate ancestors called the statues "ugly anyway." These are the people I found when I stopped reading about the other side and started talking to them.

The Inspiration

In 2015, I had a chance encounter at the Orlando airport with a drunken tugboat deckhand from Kentucky who told me he was voting for Trump. Instead of dismissing him, I listened—and we found unexpected common ground. He cared most about healthcare for the elderly and disabled, something he'd seen done right while living in Germany. We shook hands, two people who agreed about something important despite what the media told us about each other.

That moment stayed with me. As the 2020 election approached, I found myself increasingly worried about my filter bubble. My Twitter feed, my friends, my colleagues—everyone I talked to shared my views. I had no idea what people on the other side actually thought, beyond caricatures. And I suspected they had no idea about me either.

The Call for Connection

So on August 15, 2020, I posted on Twitter:

Friends! I'd like to have an hour-long Zoom call every Friday with an American with different political views from mine, from now until the election.

My goal is just to meet & understand people with different ideas, not to have a debate. Most people would classify me as a liberal, so if you, or a friend, or a family member has different views from mine... could you please encourage them to pick some time to talk to me?

I also feared my Twitter was stuck in a filter-bubble, so I asked people to retweet to help reach beyond my usual audience. And people responded.

The Methodology

I created a list of questions and asked everyone the same questions in the same order:

  1. How do you identify?
  2. What are your guiding moral principles?
  3. Who are your role models?
  4. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you grade America's past?
  5. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you grade America's future?
  6. What political issue do you care most about?
  7. If everything goes "right" for the next 100 years, what does America look like?

The questions were deliberately simple, non-provocative, pretty vanilla. I left them open to interpretation. But what surprised me was how gratified people were to have someone genuinely curious about their answers. Despite how vanilla the questions were, they always led to remarkably rich conversations.

The Conversations

Over the following weeks, I had six conversations with Americans who didn't identify as liberal. I documented each conversation in a Twitter thread. What follows are those vignettes, and what I learned.

  1. The NYC Restaurant Owner — an immigrant discussing Freedom vs. Equality
  2. The Midwestern Couple — married 50 years, voting Trump again
  3. The Hawaiian Libertarian — Obama's high school, Milton Friedman's philosophy
  4. The Southern Software Engineer — Confederate ancestors, Fedora Workstation
  5. The Infantry Team Leader — Iraq War veteran, "Muslims saved my life"
  6. The BBQ Restaurant Owner — closed his restaurant the day we spoke

The NYC Restaurant Owner

My first Zoom for America was with an immigrant in NYC who owns a restaurant. We talked about the tension between Freedom and Equality.

The Midwestern Couple

My second Zoom for America was with a Midwestern couple who've been married for 50 years and planned to vote for Trump again in November.

He was born on a dairy farm and has worked 67-hour weeks without a vacation for the last 56 years. She had a very tough childhood without a family. They both work for themselves.

They identify first and foremost as "Conservative and Pro-life," and referenced the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, and forgiving people for their mistakes as their guiding moral precepts.

They view America's past as a "severe" time, when many "mistakes" were made. But they think present-day America is worse—they rated America's past, present, and future 7/10, 4/10, and 4/10 respectively, although they believe 10/10 is possible if we can change.

They think Trump is a "hard worker," although sometimes "he doesn't act like a politician." They think Democrats want to see him fail. They believe he acted swiftly in January to combat COVID, which they see as a real virus but overblown. They mentioned "hoax" and "false news."

They are hopeful that America's future can be bright if we can view ourselves as one team. They think classifying people by race leads to more prejudice and a worse America. They feel that black people hate them for being white and avoid the city.

They think America would be better if it had: more personal accountability, education for all, full employment, less victimhood, less coddling, more respect for authority, more discipline for children, more long-lasting marriages.

When I asked them about the far future, they mentioned that they've heard semi-trucks will soon be driverless, and they worry about the jobs that this would eliminate. "Technology can be good or it can be bad."

The Hawaiian Libertarian

My third Zoom for America was with a Hawaiian Libertarian who attended the same high school as Barack Obama.

He identifies as "American & Libertarian," in that order. I asked what religious, racial, sexual, or gender terms he identifies with and he said "none."

He explained that Libertarianism is an overarching political philosophy that seeks to maximize individual liberty. He realized he was a Libertarian after reading an Economist article about the Nolan chart, which helped him identify as "socially liberal, fiscally conservative."

His top book recommendation was Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose." He describes Milton Friedman as his role model and the "quintessential libertarian economist."

I asked, "Do we live in a Libertarian environment?" He replied, "America is by far the freest nation on Earth."

I asked why he thinks that. He compared the United States to Europe, and mentioned the Bill of Rights. I re-read the Bill of Rights for the first time since fourth grade.

He explained "the Libertarian Dilemma"—the tension between individual liberty and group integrity. In WWII, Germany and Japan were "the ultimate expression of a group formed on the basis of ethnicity." "America is a group based on an idea," and therefore more powerful.

I asked, "How does a Libertarian choose between two different futures, where each has maximum personal liberty? Or do all futures with maximum personal liberty converge?" And "If everyone dies painlessly in their sleep, is a Libertarian happy or upset?"

He referenced the book "The State of Humanity," which argues that humanity is moving in a better direction. I thought, but did not mention, that the freedom to choose one's lifespan could be the Libertarian motivation for an enduring humanity.

The Southern Software Engineer

My fourth Zoom for America was with a center-right, Southern software engineer whose ancestors fought for the Confederacy in the American Civil War.

He identifies as an "American, Southern" married man and father who lives in the suburbs. He has a "laid back, geek persuasion" and his Linux distro of choice is Fedora Workstation.

I mentioned some Linux projects I'd contributed to, to see if he'd used them, and he said "yes, back when I cared what things looked like."

His guiding set of morals is "don't hurt people; do no harm." I asked if he had a role model, and he said "my dad, yes and no... and Dr. Samantha Carter from Stargate."

"In Stargate, some men were giving her a hard time and she said 'I have bigger cojones than you.'" I asked why that seemed special to him. "Nobody is better than anyone else just because of what they're born with."

I asked him about America's past: "There are a lot of good things and a lot of bad things, especially being from the South. My ancestors fought a war for not very good things." But he believes America does the right thing in the end, even if there's "a painful transition."

I asked what political issue mattered most to him: "The tax burden of the federal government [is too onerous], and states can't tax enough to do what they want to do."

I asked what a bright future for America looks like: "A better version of what we have now. A peaceful nation, a melting pot of global cultures, where people can live any legal non-harmful life they want. Where there's a social safety net, someone to help but not provide for you."

I asked him about the distant future. He'd like to see "colonization of space, breathing room, let the Earth heal. With reduced pollution levels and less people on Earth."

Circling back to his Confederate ancestors, I asked if he could share more of his perspective: "Slavery harms human beings" and he is categorically opposed to that. Confederate statues are "ugly anyway." He thinks his attitude is "50/50" representative of Confederate descendants.

The Infantry Team Leader

My fifth Zoom for America was with an infantry team leader from the Iraq War who has degrees in History and Political Science, and a minor in Philosophy.

After being arrested and expelled in high school, he graduated anyway and joined the Army for six years, serving in Germany, Iraq, Mexico, and Africa. Afterwards, he went to college, then became a project manager at a construction company.

He identifies as "logical, a smartass, big heart, and don't like bullies." His time in the military and his history degree taught him to "take a step back" and not judge situations too quickly or simplistically.

His guiding moral principles: "You're either an asshole or you're not, I don't care about your background. Judge people by their character."

"Like most veterans I've seen what the world really offers—humanity at its best and worst. When you come home, you have a level head and don't react. I've been in countries where people are lucky to have a lightbulb or running water."

His role models are George Washington and Ben Franklin, because they were independents, although he has been influenced by many others, including the philosophers he studied.

America has an imperfect, violent past, but is not uniquely or supremely bad among nations. Bad things were "normal" in the past. We're still young, doing our best to fix mistakes, we're on the right path.

He thinks another civil war is inevitable because people cannot talk to each other, so violence is the only resort, and it will happen in 5-10 years. The war will not be "North vs South," but lots of groups that cannot be controlled by the government "stalling cities out."

"What will this war be about?" "That's what's scary—a lot of these people don't know what they are fighting for."

Americans come together in times of need so he thinks it will be scary, but we will prevail intact.

The political issue he cares most about is term limits. "Everyone concentrates too much on the President, and not on Congress, [whose members] care too much about their party and not their constituents."

I asked what a future America could look like if things go well. "If China, Russia, and America came together, what we could accomplish would be scary (in a good way). The sky is the limit—mining asteroids, space exploration, medicine, crop production."

"I don't think the planet will come together until we're threatened as a species, until then it's the same BS from 12.5 thousand years of written human history."

I asked if he had a unique perspective from his time in the military:

"If you made everyone serve two years, it would solve all social issues. One thing military does, it puts everyone on common ground right when you get in. They shave your head, put you in uniform right away, you can only judge based on character."

"You live with people you've never thought you'd meet. Half of my unit were not Americans. It erases prejudice. If you only grow up around white southern people, of course you'll be prejudiced. What I love about the military is, you treat everyone as a human being."

"My mom made a comment about Muslims, and she would kiss the ground Trump walks on. I told her 'Muslims saved my life.' I fought extremists, not Muslims—Muslims want the same as anyone: go to work, provide for their family."

The BBQ Restaurant Owner

My sixth Zoom for America was with a Trump-voting, Southern BBQ restaurant owner. He was born in Okinawa, raised in Pensacola, and he closed his Montgomery restaurant after 11½ years on the day we spoke.

The son of a Born Again Air Force veterinarian, he went to school, raised a family, and made a career in Montgomery. He has a degree in History, with focuses in Early American, German, and Russian history.

He opened his restaurant in 2009 after the housing market crash forced him out of real estate. The restaurant chain was founded in 1958 by a 400lb bricklayer, who received his prized BBQ recipe directly from God in a dream.

His mother and father raised him in a too-strict conservative Christian household with a "Doomsday Culture." He identifies as Entrepreneurial, Pragmatic, and Faithful (in the religious sense).

As far as his guiding morals, he believes it's impossible for him to be moral without his faith in Jesus, but still considers himself a "moral failure" and therefore has no license to judge others. He regrets his lack of self control during his youth, and his ambition.

When I asked about his role models, he distanced himself from his father, and mentioned that Jacob from Genesis reminds him of his own moral failings, strength, and faith in God. "Genesis is screwed up. If those people made it, we have hope."

He rates America's past 8/10, comparing to his knowledge of German and Russian history, and noted that slavery was our biggest issue. "In socialist countries, people build boats out of trash to come here, because of self-determination."

"I think America has a bright future. I love today's day-and-age, even though it decimated and closed my business, I would not change anything. As long as we have liberty, pursuit of happiness, and self-determination."

He thinks Trump is "the answer to our situation," because he espouses free markets/capitalism and liberty.

"I saw the Berlin Wall and Reagan tell Gorbachev to tear it down. I'm used to a big bombastic loud President. I don't need a coddler. I have no problem with a President who says what's on his mind, I want to know what he thinks."

Abortion is the most important political issue to him because he was an unexpected child, born with his umbilical cord around his neck, which he referred to as "the devil's first chance." He feels it's morally unacceptable and he will never change his mind.

"Taking the life of an unborn child is not murder, but I cannot accept it's not a human. These are children who have done nothing wrong, no chance to do right or wrong. I cannot grasp in my pea brain that you would kill something before it's born."

He goes to an abortion clinic every Friday to pray across the street but "not to harass." He thinks Trump will get reelected and Roe v Wade will be overturned in five years. "Ending abortion will open solutions for education, healthcare, poverty—the underlying issues."

I asked what the world will look like if everything goes according to his wishes for 100 years. "I don't want a theocracy. I am skeptical of the Church, and becoming a big skeptic of organized Christian religion [specifically]. The Church killed Jesus."

He believes there is a Marxist program for disrupting society by magnifying our differences and fomenting racial hatred being enacted now. It's not a conspiracy per se, but perpetrated by "those who benefit when people are set against each other."

He thinks today's discord is due to this. "It's not a matter of race, it's haves versus have-nots, and those with education versus those without." He gave an example of wealthy, educated black people he saw at Starbucks in Atlanta.

I asked if he thinks about the far future, and he said "No—Dick Tracy had these amazing watches, and once I saw people talking to their watches, I stopped wondering about the future. I prefer to remember the past's lessons and minimize repeating them. If we do that we'll be okay."

What I Learned

These six conversations gave me something I couldn't get from Twitter or cable news: actual human beings, with histories and contradictions and hopes.

They were not caricatures. The infantry team leader who might vote for Trump told his mother that "Muslims saved my life." The software engineer with Confederate ancestors thought the statues were "ugly anyway." The BBQ restaurant owner who prays outside abortion clinics didn't want a theocracy.

They valued character over background. Multiple participants emphasized judging people by their character rather than their background, race, or religion. "You're either an asshole or you're not, I don't care about your background."

They worried about division. Several participants expressed deep concern about Americans' inability to talk to each other. One predicted civil war. But they also believed Americans come together in times of need.

They had thought deeply about their values. These weren't people who hadn't examined their beliefs. They referenced philosophers, economists, history, and religious texts. They could articulate why they believed what they believed.

They wanted similar things. A peaceful nation. A melting pot of cultures. People free to live their lives. Healthcare. Education. Self-determination. The specifics of how to get there differed wildly, but the destination wasn't so different.

They felt misunderstood. Several mentioned that the media misrepresents their views. They felt their perspectives were dismissed or caricatured. Sound familiar?

I don't know if these conversations changed anyone's mind—mine or theirs. But they reminded me that the people on the other side of the political divide are people. They have families, jobs, regrets, hopes. They're trying to figure out the right thing to do, just like me.