Weekend reads: 'We have to start listening to each other'

A Q&A with the Texas writer Carrie McKean

Wenmei Zhou/Getty Images

Happy Sunday, reader. And greetings from Ottawa, where I’m attending the Reimagining Political Journalism conference at Carleton University. It’s been an invigorating weekend of debate on the state of Canadian political journalism — and where we might go from here. (You can read coverage of the panel I sat on here.)

I’ve been struck throughout by the humanizing power of being together in-person. I have watched reporters who’ve traded barbs online find common ground on panels, and journalists from opposite ends of the political spectrum chat genially at the coffee table. Credit is due to the conference’s organizers, including Carleton’s Adrian Harewood and Loyalist College’s Andy Clarke, for working to represent the diversity of viewpoints in this country and inviting journalists from both left-leaning and right-leaning publications to participate. We are all so much richer for hearing a wider range of opinions.

One of the themes I heard emerging among all journalists this weekend was the desire for more complexity in the public conversation. This is a hopeful sign in these polarized times, and one I take to heart.

As many of you know, my main goal as a journalist is — as the Washington Post columnist Amanda Ripley has talked about — to “complicate the narrative.” On that front, I’m pleased to bring you a conversation with a writer whose work exemplifies this approach. Carrie McKean lives in Midland, Texas, and her writing has appeared in Christianity Today, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. Here, in an edited and condensed Q&A, we discuss the aftermath of the American election.

TH: This week I interviewed the writer and farmer Larissa Phillips about her Free Press essay “Whatever Happens, Love Thy Neighbor.” You commented on her essay online and so I found your Christianity Today essay, “The Antidote to Election Anxiety.” You write that “plenty of Americans are afraid of people in communities like mine.” Tell me about your community in West Texas, and the reaction to the presidential election there.

CM: I live in the Midland-Odessa region of West Texas. It’s five hours from Dallas, five hours from El Paso, about five hours from Austin. It’s a middle-of-nowhere place, but it’s also the center of the U.S. oil and gas industry. It has a very low unemployment rate. This is an unusual place, in that people that only have a high school diploma can still make a livable wage out in the oil fields and take care of a family. It’s a strange place in that it’s easy to stereotype: Friday Night Lights, the movie that’s based in this area, and the book too. And President George Bush was from here.

There’s a lot of deep conservative roots. And, I’ve discovered, a lot of misunderstanding about what, for example, the oil and gas industry is really like. That we’re all just out here lighting oil wells on fire and polluting the earth. [You can read McKean’s op-ed about this in The New York Times.] There’s a lot of disdain for the industry … There’s this way of demonizing and vilifying that’s interesting to me.

On the other end, knowing you are hated by so many parts of the country, there is almost this reaction of, “Well, screw you.” That’s not putting it very nicely. But there’s kind of a “We’re going to double down, we are going to be proud of who we are, and we’re not going to apologize for it.” So, there is an edge, especially when it comes to the more conservative politics. Obviously, it’s a very, very red area. People are unapologetic about it. And so, it becomes easy to turn it into a caricature. Pretty much it’s trading in stereotypes both ways. People here are thinking that, “Oh, all those crazy liberals in New York City.” Conversely, I have found that the stereotypes coming the other direction are often just as damaging.

TH: One of the things I love about your writing is that it is constantly complicating the narrative. For example, in “The Antidote to Election Anxiety” essay, you point to a local owner of a flower shop who participated in January 6th, but note that she got very little local support — so little, in fact, that she had to close her shop and move away. Another one of your pieces calls for more nuance in portrayals of Trump supporters, with an example of a Hispanic pastor who both likes Trump’s border policy and also shelters migrants. What do you think the legacy media missed with this election? What was missing in the portrayal of Trump supporters?

CM: First, I should say that I am not at all surprised by the result of the election. What I will say is I had enough self-awareness to recognize that I live in a political bubble and that maybe I can’t see the forest for the trees. So, I was like, “Well, I could be wrong. They say it’s going to be a real nail-biter.” But in my gut, I’m like, “I don’t think it’s going to be close. I think it’s going to be a landslide.” It doesn’t matter that I predicted that, because it’s irrelevant. The reason I even bring that up is because I think it also points to what I think the media missed. And that is that most people are not rabid Trump supporters. I know very, very few — and I live in one of the places where there should be the most.

It points to what I think the media missed. And that is that most people are not rabid Trump supporters. I know very, very few — and I live in one of the places where there should be the most.

I have had so many people say things like, “It’s not a marriage, it’s a chess move.” Or, honestly, deep frustration that these were the two options presented to us. That’s been the most common thing said.

My experience in 2016 is that that’s when I really saw the fracturing of people in our own community. [There was] the deeply loyal Trump MAGA types, and then people that were like, “This isn’t what it means to be conservative. This isn’t right, this is wrong. We shouldn’t talk about people this way.” So, that split happened back then, and it was stark. That’s when I saw churches split and families have trouble.

Over the period of 2016 to now, I’ve seen a softening in most people. Trump’s hardened ideologues, that group has stayed the same. But what I’ve seen is there has been more people that were maybe still conservative in their politics, and really still don’t like Trump — and maybe even gave Biden a chance, and voted for him as a reaction to Trump — but then watching the political landscape of 2016 to 2024, seeing the extremism on the other side grow … That has made a lot of people that are moderate right-of-center be like, “You know what? Biden is still in office, even though he is obviously not functionally competent to be a president right now. I guess that means we’re going to say that it’s the platform and not the person that matters.” A lot of people that are like, “Okay, I don’t like Trump, but I’m going to vote for that platform.” I saw a lot of people move that had maybe been a little bit moderate.

I think the reason that matters is that if you’re thinking that everybody that voted for Trump is a racist, misogynist ideologue, who is just MAGA to the core, you are really missing [the story]. That’s terrifying to think that our country has been overrun by those kinds of people; I understand why that would be terrifying. I don’t want to live in a country like that either. But I don’t think that’s the majority of people.

I’m still worried, especially now that Republicans have clenched absolutely every area of government. I think that doesn’t help us moderate things. So, it’s still a concern. And I still think there is going to be a need for a conservative resistance movement of some sort. But at the core of it, I don’t think that most people that voted for Trump are going all-in, like we’re all bit players in The Handmaid’s Tale. We’re not like that.

People [on the left] are reacting to their worst nightmares, when the vast majority of people that I know that voted for Trump don’t like him either. But you’re picking between these two ever-extreme policies and platforms. One of the most important books I have read in the last year is Musa al-Gharbi’s We Have Never Been Woke. I wish everybody would read it. Because that right there gets at why people voted for Trump, more than anything that I’ve seen.

TH: Musa al-Gharbi came on my podcast recently and I think his book is the most significant book of the year. You write in your review, “We Have Never Been Deplorable,” that “for anyone genuinely curious about why working-class culturally conservative Americans, many of them evangelical Christians, remain so loyal to Trump, We Have Never Been Woke is required reading.” What’s your main takeaway from the book?

CM: He puts words to something that I have observed over the last few years and couldn’t put my finger on … The Democratic Party, in their interactions with the working class, you have really polished speech, saying really lovely things. We are very careful about what we say, and how we say it, and what words and what pronouns and which terms we use. We’re so careful about what we say. But underneath is this disdain for people who don’t fit in a very, very small box.

I grew up in very conservative evangelical circles, that whole fundamentalist culture. Now, this is taking al-Gharbi’s work in a direction that he did not go, so I don’t want to put words in his mouth … but there are parallels between the fundamentalism of my youth and the fundamentalism I see on the left today. But it’s a very secular fundamentalism, obviously, on the left.

TH: In your election anxiety essay, you write that you heard from a legacy media editor. He genuinely wanted to increase the diversity of viewpoints in his publication, and yet you couldn’t agree on a story angle. I think that is the missing piece. I think that is how the monoculture happens. Because there is no exposure to that viewpoint in the legacy media and there is no familiarity with it — and so, there is no acceptance of it.

CM: My community is quick to say things like “the mainstream media is so biased.” I, for a long time, really rejected that. Now, I think it’s true but not for the reason that the people around me think it’s true. They tend to think it’s some sort of backroom [pact], these powerful, shadowy figures that are controlling the narrative. I don’t think it’s that malevolent. I don’t actually think it’s intentional. I think it is that everybody working in these places come from the same schools, the same zip codes, the same socioeconomic backgrounds, and they don’t know what they don’t know. We’re all prone to thinking that our experience is normative, rather than just “my experience.”

TH: I know that you have been very critical of Trump in the past. The pandemic was a reckoning for you, and you wrote in The Atlantic about the school closures, and about what it was like to live in Texas during that time. Where do you sit today? Are you politically homeless? Do you feel like you are part “the exhausted majority”?

CM: I definitely identify as being politically homeless and part of the exhausted majority. I’ll just lay my cards on the table: I voted third party. I know that people say that’s throwing your vote away, but also, I live in a place where it doesn’t matter — which is a whole other conversation. In America, increasingly we are sorting ourselves. We mostly live in places where it doesn’t matter. So, I was like, “In this case, I can be true to my convictions.” If I lived in a battleground state, I probably would have been more conflicted about what to do.

I will say that the last time Trump was elected, I felt an existential crisis, like Chicken Little “the sky is falling.” We don’t need to rehash all the reasons why. But what everybody is feeling right now, I was in that place the first time. I think living through that first presidency, and also then living through what was supposed to be the healing that comes after Trump, and seeing everything get worse — the divisions and the bitterness and the acrimony, it just got worse on both sides. I’m like, “Okay, well, that’s not working.” So I’m less hysterical now. I’m like, “You know what? The sky is not going to fall. We’re going to have another election in a couple years.”

There was a piece that The Dispatch did this last week. I thought it was probably the best articulation of the actual danger that gives me pause about another Trump presidency. It has a lot more to do with the consolidation of power. I think that’s the place that I’m very wary about. Also, my radar is going to be up pretty high for places that I feel like I need to speak out. Not that I have that much of a voice. But I don’t want to see us further dehumanize people, and immigrants, and all those things. That’s a big place for me of concern.

TH: What are your hopes for the country going forward?

CM: I would like it to be a place that my girls can have a good life. That’s obviously my biggest hope. I want them to be able to have good jobs, and have a family if they want, and have a house that they can afford. I want that for all of America’s children. I want better education for our kids.

So many things I don’t think will be solved at the Oval Office. It has to do with what’s happening in our communities. I’m trying to get super-focused on how we make a difference for the people here in our town. Things like improving education and making sure that families are resourced and supported. There are so many hurting people, for so many different reasons, and we really need to help each other.

Also, there is a real need to fight the polarization on an individual level. Again, that’s not something you do at the White House-level. That’s something you do in your individual relationships, and with your neighbours. We have to start listening to each other.

Stay tuned, next week on the Lean Out podcast I’m joined by Andy Mills of the Reflector podcast, for a conversation about what the media missed covering the presidential election.