Opinion

Here we are, queuing up for an election-year roller coaster that almost no one is looking forward to — one that will make us turn on our neighbors and fear enemies we will never meet. It’s nauseating and expensive, this roller coaster, and yet we’re buckling up and lowering the safety bar once again.

But what if — humor me here — we found a way to step back from the ride?

I’ve spent the past few weeks asking people across the political divide this question to crowdsource a playbook for election-year sanity. At this point, we may not have a choice about the candidates. But we do have a choice about how we respond to them.

After all, we are now, all of us, experts in how to live through a hyperpolarized election — with these exact presidential candidates. Whatever happens, we can’t keep doing what we’ve always done.

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Our elections have gotten so bad that just anticipating them causes adverse health effects, according to research by psychology professor Shevaun D. Neupert. A quarter of us have seriously considered moving because of politics, political psychologist Kevin B. Smith has found. Even worse: One in 20 adults in America have had suicidal thoughts linked to politics. “Politics is a chronic stressor, saturating popular culture and permeating daily life through social media, various entertainment platforms and a 24-hour news cycle,” Smith concluded in a 2022 PLOS ONE study aptly titled “Politics is making us sick.”

This is no way to live. And the temptation, for me at least, is to withdraw. But disengagement creates new problems, says theologian Russell Moore, author of “Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America.” “There’s a worry for me that there’s a numbness, an exhaustion,” says Moore, who went through a very public split from the Southern Baptist Convention over his position on sexual abuse and racial reconciliation within the denomination. “I think that’s dangerous. I want to still be shocked to some degree. Shocked but not thrown, I suppose.”

How can we be shocked — but not thrown? Engaged — but not enraged? I suspect that trying to find this balance may be the most important thing most of us can do in the next eight months. More important even than voting. (Yes, I said it.)

Create demilitarized zones

One thing Moore is doing differently these days is to allow certain core relationships to remain outside the zone of political debate. “There are relationships where the argument can’t be won,” he says, “but the relationship really does matter.”

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This feels counterintuitive. After all, the stakes for this election are high. We now know exactly what these two candidates are capable of. The laws and policies we are fighting over — on abortion, the border, guns and so much more — affect millions of people’s lives in profound and intimate ways. There is little room for denial or doubt.

So why avoid talking about politics now, of all times, with anyone?

Here’s the answer I’ve come to, for now: Staying in relationship with one another is the only way to get lasting change. Hard conversations matter, but some people are not ready — not now. They don’t want to hear it — and maybe neither do you. Severed relationships harden our hearts and freeze our minds in place. Long term, that retrenchment can make everything worse by leaving us more isolated from one another.

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Even when everyone in a family agrees on politics, it’s healthy to create a no-fly zone. Kelly Corrigan, the podcaster and host of “Tell Me More” on PBS, is trying to resist the urge to trade breaking-news outrages with her husband this time around. Nothing good comes from grievance swaps. “We’ve been married for almost 25 years, and we feel exactly the same way. We’d just walk around livid, just crazed.”

The goal is strategic as much as it is spiritual. “I would like my side to win,” Corrigan told me. “And I’m going to do things to help my side win. I’m going to use my platform to say some things.” But she wants to make what she says hearable — even to people who disagree. “I don’t want to insult anybody,” she says. “I can’t approach people with disgust, with superiority, with a desire to explode their every argument.”

To maintain that equanimity out in the world, you need to practice it at home. In previous election years, I might have told myself that these gripe sessions would make me feel less alone; now I know they just leave me feeling more aggrieved. There is usually nowhere good for that........

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