Fighting words

In honor of the holidays between now and New Year’s, this post isn’t directly about the history of authoritarianism or current politics—although they’re tangentially related. As people spend time with their birth families or chosen one, politics and our current swing toward a more authoritarian America can definitely wreck conversations. That’s what I want to talk about here.

I didn’t start writing for a living in any significant way until I was almost forty years old, by which point I had pursued some unusual lines of work. One of them was teaching martial arts and self defense for seven years. On the traditional martial arts side, I trained in and taught Tae Kwon Do and Krav Maga. On the self-defense side, I taught and designed programming for kids and adults, women and men, gay, lesbian, and trans populations, survivors of assault and refugees from around the world who had come to the DC area.

Today I’ll write about two non-fighting things I learned from that time that I think might be useful to you at family gatherings and in the coming weeks and months. They may be particularly helpful if you’re someone who sees the trajectory of the country right now as dangerous but find yourself surrounded by people who seem thrilled by what’s happening.

Let me say first that I am not a therapist, and you are the best judge of your own situation. If you’re dealing with unresolved history of violence or psychological abuse, or if you’re at risk around family members, co-workers, or any other group, I encourage you to prioritize your well-being and protect yourself.

And let it be said, too, that the advice I’m giving you today is not going to solve your biggest-picture challenges. But if you want to be around your family, and you want to be able to communicate about hard things, yet you find that one or more difficult relatives tend to hijack the conversation or ratchet it into a shouting match—or that things tend to escalate into the same, unproductive ways, I may have some useful thoughts for you.

Coming in high and low

There were times when teaching where I needed to coach students who were in the middle of an actual fight. Not a street fight, but contact fighting of one kind or another. Sometimes it was when students were sparring with other students. Sometimes I was coaching a full-force self-defense fight, where students did power strikes on attackers wearing padded gear.

When I trained to teach these classes, again and again, I heard similar ideas. If a situation gets out of control or overwhelming, or people feel threatened, they start to shut down. It can be hard for them to hear anyone at all.

Typically as a coach, you have two choices to be heard. You can come in at either a much higher or a much lower volume and energy than your everyday register and the surrounding volume in the room.

Think of the first one—the louder one—as shouting to be heard. It doesn’t have to be shouting, really, just louder than the ambient noise and your usual way of speaking. And at times, this approach can get attention.

But at a family gathering, it’s likely to be less effective. Even if the conversation starts to feel like it’s getting to fighting words, unlike my instructor scenario, you’re not their teacher. Which means they’re going to be much less tolerant of being yelled at by you when you want their attention.

So it’s the second model—the quiet voice—that I’m guessing is more likely to be useful. It may sound odd, but even in a loud environment (as long as your listeners aren’t actually hearing impaired), pitching your voice as quieter than the room as a whole can be really effective. People often focus on the thing that sounds different or new.

At first, it might only be those seated close to you who will notice, but if they start paying attention, others will, too.

In terms of dealing with friends or family that have different views, the quiet voice invites substantive discussion. For the many people dealing with family who have succumbed to the Trump fantasy world, in which substantive discussion may no longer be possible, the quiet voice preserves your ability to be heard by family members who may still live in reality but who have mostly checked out of the political realm and may not realize how bad things could get.

You still need substance

Coming in with the quiet voice may get listeners’ attention, but what you say is important, too. It may be tempting to use the quiet voice for passive-aggressive under-the-breath insults. And if your goal is entertaining yourself and those seated near you, who am I to deny you your fun?

But if your goal is not to win an argument, but to get people to think for themselves, then that will affect your language, too. First and foremost, don’t attribute bad motives to anyone at the table.

Next, don’t simply claim your feelings with “I” statements like “I’m afraid that…,” “I think that Trump is dangerous...” While it’s good to own your subjectivity, it’s easy for the discussion to be shut down immediately. You’re afraid, but the other person can easily say, “I’m not afraid.” You think Trump is dangerous? Their obvious answer is “No, he’s not.” There are ways you might still salvage the discussion, but you’re already shutting doors just as you’re getting started.

Often the best thing is to replicate the dynamic of that teaching model I mentioned earlier. I tried to get the student to hear input from a third party and respond in a new way to someone else.

People who support Trump are not going to respond in any helpful way to “Trump is bad”—it takes the discussion into an automatic mode and fallback positions for everyone. So don’t make Trump the focal point of your comment. Pick a target that promotes actual thought.

Talk about who’s being targeted and the ways bad policies affect real people. “I feel bad for the refugees here legally who’ve been threatened by their neighbors and by politicians, like the Haitians in Springfield.” Or “I feel terrible for the 26,000 women assaulted in Texas since abortions were effectively outlawed there who had to carry their attacker’s child to term.” Or “It seems wrong that trans kids and parents who have worked out treatments with their doctors are being told by more places that they can’t get medical care anymore.”

Just as I would give specific recommendations when coaching, the more local you can make your statement, the better. Something in your own state, your own experience, or best of all, in your listeners’ direct experience, the more powerful it will be. The farther away in time, distance, or familiarity, the harder it will be as an entry point to a real conversation.

Mind your footwork

The other advice I’d offer is related to the general anxiety you may be feeling with a second Trump administration looming. A couple decades ago, I was out in L.A. at a week-long instructor training. It was almost all men, so I ended up partnering with one of two guys, each of whom had about 80 pounds and at least three or four inches of reach on me.

One of them was also a boxer who was turning professional. The first time we sparred, I of course had to spend a lot of time staying out of his sweet spot, that range where he could hit me but I couldn’t hit him.

So I did need to stay in motion. And I had a ton of energy. But after a couple minutes, he told me something along the lines of “You are jackrabbiting all over the place here. You are moving so much more than you need to. You’ve got to slow down and be more intentional with your footwork. By doing less, you’ll be able to do so much more.”

Particularly in a long fight, you want to save energy. But even when that isn’t the issue, I was moving so much more than he was that I wound up with fewer grounded moments to kick effectively or throw good punches. I was so keyed up to fight that my momentum and energy was just bleeding into open air instead of being directed at my opponent.

I know that it’s easy to get freaked out about what may happen in the next four years and about some of the things already happening now. I know that it’s easy to feel like outrage and other big emotions are in and of themselves a strategy—in part because they’re so good at burning up energy. But they’re not.

If you move less, but move in more focused directions, you’re going to be more effective—every time. So between now and the New Year, if any of this sounds like it might apply to you, try using the quiet voice. Try directing your fire at targets most people might be able to see as deserving criticism for specific harms. Think about conserving your energy for the useful and productive ways of being in the world or fighting back.

We’re in this for the long haul, and it’s good to think about how to communicate, even in these trying times. As more attacks are launched against the best institutions and policies the U.S. has managed to establish, it’s critical that we find ways to continue to talk to others about the things that actually matter to all of us.

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