The big stuck boat as an analogy for political disagreements in relationships

In reference to whether it's possible to have relationships with people with different politics, someone much smarter than me (and I wish I remembered who so I could give them credit) once said "You can disagree about what the solutions are, but you have to agree about what the problems are."

Sarah Gailey's excellent article "I Like That The Boat Is Stuck" provides a perfect analogy for this.

There's no debate over whether or not the big boat is stuck: it is a big boat, and it is stuck, and we are all aware of those facts, even those of us who are currently located in outer space.

Furthermore, most of us share the opinion that it's disagreeable, logistically, for the boat to be stuck. The boat being stuck is inconvenient. It's a big disruption! Nobody can say it isn't a big disruption. None of my distant relatives will get into arguments on The Face Website about whether or not the stuck boat is making a nuisance for lots of people. I like that.

We all agree that it's stuck, and we all agree that this is a bad thing. We might disagree about how best to get it unstuck. We might disagree about the amount of sacrifice that is reasonable to get it unstuck.  We might disagree about whether the other ships waiting to use the canal should keep waiting patiently or should detour around Africa. We might disagree about how to prevent similar problems in the future.

 

And we can have a civilized disagreement about that. We can, in fact, agree to disagree and go about our lives. If any of us are actually involved in unstuckening the ship, we can use the approach that we think is best, or pitch the approach that we think is best to our bosses. We can use multiple approaches in parallel. Ultimately, we're all on the same side.

 

But imagine that there's someone out there arguing that the ship isn't stuck. Or that the ship should be stuck. Or that more ships should be stuck. Imagine that, instead of discussing whether we should bring more diggers to dig the ship out or more tugboats to tug the ship out, they're bringing in diggers and tugboats working to get the ship even more firmly stuck.

That person is harder to get along with, aren't they?

Now imagine if, instead of a ship on the other side of the world, the problem is something more immediate, something that threatens your survival or safety or bodily integrity, or that of people you care about.

To use the example that's at the forefront of everyone's mind, you're trying to keep people safe from the virus, and but there's someone insisting the virus doesn't exist and advocating for activities that will spread the virus. 

They're just . . . in the way, aren't they?

If they're someone you already care about, you might feel it's worth keeping them in your life despite the fact that they're in the way. Or you might not. But if they're a new person, there's really no point in bringing them into your life if all they're going to do is get your boat more stuck.