The setup:
I met Matt Kappler in 2012, and it was immediately clear we had nothing in common. He lifted weights to death metal; I jogged to Sondheim. I was one of President Barack Obama’s speechwriters and had an Ivy League degree; he was a huge Joe Rogan fan and went on to get his electrician’s license.
The second line, after they begin surfing together:
It helped that in the ocean, our places in the pecking order reversed. Matt’s a very good surfer — one might call him “an elite” — and I am not. According to surfing’s unwritten rules, he had the right to look down on me. But he never did. His generosity of spirit in the water made me rethink my own behavior on land.
The author who thinks 'our places in the pecking order reversed' edited Yale's humor magazine and now writes for McSweeney's and the Onion. How did he ever imagine that he outranked a licensed electrician and expert surfer? Just because he wrote some speeches that a politician pretended to believe long enough to read them?
Still, the open-mindedness is refreshing.
Matt and I haven’t really changed each other’s minds on major national issues. But we have changed each other. His fearlessness in consequential surf made me more courageous. His ability to go “over the ledge,” launching himself off breaking lips, helped me curb my overthinking. Ostracizing him wouldn’t have altered his behavior — and it would have made my own life worse.
That's not nothing.
3 comments:
That's very good to read. The author is a lucky man to have met Matt.
I got the article from the Free Press and blogged about it a couple of weeks ago. I saw much the same as you.
https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2025/07/subtle-slanting.html
Amazing bits in this editorial:
"Being unfriendly to people who turned down the vaccine felt like the right thing to do. How else could we motivate them to mend their ways?
"I wasn’t the only one thinking this. A 2021 essay for USA Today declared, 'It’s time to start shunning the "vaccine hesitant."’ An L.A. Times piece went further, arguing that to create 'teachable moments,' it may be necessary to mock some anti-vaxxers’ deaths.
The author acknowledges that the victims of these tactics didn't change their minds but instead their circle of friends. He can't resist adding that their new friendship circles constituted "an alternate universe full of grievance peddlers and conspiracy theorists who thrived on stories of victimized conservatives." I wonder if he has allowed himself to consider how hard easy-going Matt may have to work to conquer his occasional revulsion? He knows without any doubt that Stephen Miller is odious, but feels sure that he himself is not.
I wouldn't say I'm estranged from any friends or family over politics, but I'm estranged from some over their inability to behave themselves. I won't argue politics with any but a very few who have proved able to do it civilly. For the rest, if they approach political snideness or personal attack, I decline either to absorb it quietly or respond in kind, and suggest that we'll need to change the subject. Only if they can't live with these boundaries is any estrangement necessary.
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