Here's Delaware congresswoman Sarah McBride, the first openly trans member of Congress, talking with Ezra Klein about two topics near and dear to my heart: how we behave on social media and how the social media era has warped our perception of reality. These are longer quotes that normal, but that's the way it goes for podcast quotes, people just take a bit longer to maybe their point than when writing.

I think that whether it's subconscious or even conscious, rewarding of unproductive conversations has completely undermined the capacity for us as individuals (or politically) for us to have conversations that persuade that open people's hearts and minds that meet them where they are. And I think the other dynamic that we have with social media is that there are sort of two kinds of people on social media, The vast majority of people are doom scrollers. They just go on and they scroll their social media. 20% maybe, are doom posters. 10% on the far right, 10% on the far left. The people who are so strident and angry that they're compelled to post, and that content gets elevated. But what that has resulted in for the 80% who are just doom scrollers is this false perception of reality. Take a person would say their center left, and it gives them a false perception of everyone on the left believes this. And it pulls them that way. And then it gives them a false perception that everyone on the right believes the most extreme version of the right. And it creates this false, binary, extreme perception, availability bias, because all of the content we're seeing is reflective of just the 20%. And it's warped our perception of reality. It's warped our perception of who people are and where the public is.

And:

On social media, we have come to this conclusion, rightfully so, that people's grace has been abused in our society. That the grace of marginalized people, the patience of marginalized people, has been abused, and that is true. But on social media, the course correction to that has been to eliminate all grace from our politics. It's, "how dare you have conversations with people who disagree with you?" "How dare you be willing to work with people who disagree with you?" "How dare you compromise?" "How dare you seek to find common ground with Republicans?" And I think when you go out into the real world, Democrats, independents, and Republicans, there is a hunger for some level of grace for us to just not be so angry at one another and miserable.

The conversation is absolutely fantastic, and I think it's a sober look at what's gone wrong in recent years with the way the left has tried to (correctly, by the way) both advance the rights of trans people as well as simply see to their safety in society. Her reflection is not about why the right is correct and her rights should be harassed, it's about how similar social movements around race and sexual orientation have found success in moving public opinion.

Sarah later goes into discussing how quickly we can be to eject someone from our coalition if they aren't completely perfect in every view and every statement they make. In fact, I suspect some people are already angry at me for listening to or mentioning Ezra Klein at all.

Honestly, I was anxious when I saw this episode title appear in my podcast app because it's a tough subject, but I was really happy I listened.