Commentary: Watch the Debate? Five Better Ways to Spend Your Evening

By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Photo by Blake Wisz on Unsplash

Tonight’s presidential debate is at once the most closely watched event of our time (or, at least, the most closely watched since the Biden-Trump debate), and a predictable bore.

So scripted have debates become, they’re more about watching to see who makes a mistake and less about swaying undecided voters. It’s the cynical reality of the first component (such watchers already know who they’re going to vote for), and the relative lack of the second component that makes the entire exercise hard to watch.

Debates are the classic example of what a Carnegie Endowment study term “affective polarization.”

Even though Americans are not as ideologically polarized as they believe themselves to be, they are emotionally polarized (known as “affective polarization”). In other words, they do not like members of the other party.

In other words, the debate is orchestrated for and staged for the most extreme ends of American voters—what the Carnegia Endowment study calls progressive activists and devoted conservatives.

Such displays ignore the majority of Americans, who the Carnegie Endowment study identifies as traditionally conservative or liberal, passive conservatives and liberals, and people who are disengaged politically.

To find our way forward as a society and bridge the gap between the most extreme wings of our political identities and those who are not living on those edges, our best bet is to focus more on our local environment.

To that end, here are some suggestions for something to do this evening other than watching the debate.

• Invite a neighbor to dinner. Eating as a social custom is on thin ice in America. Fewer of us are cooking and sitting down together are family and neighbors; more of us are eating out. However, inviting neighbors to dinner and preparing a meal may well be the best way we have to build stronger relationships with those we disagree. It need not be fancy. Hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill will often more than suffice.

• Turn off social media. Doom-scrolling—the act of mindlessly scrolling through Facebook and X for hours on end—has negative effects on mental health. It also grossly distorts our understanding of the world. The PBS documentary Generation Like is now 10 years old, but the dynamics and dysfunction it describes are truer now than when the documentary was made. Switch off the debate and watch this documentary this evening.

• Pick up a book. Reading may well be the most-powerful tool we have in our toolkit for breaking down the vertical walls that divide us. Good books provide in-depth, nuanced solutions and ideas that force us to think more reflectively and engage the world with a more-inquisitive imagination.

• Attend a local meeting. The Spotsylvania Board of Supervisors and the Stafford School Board have meetings this evening. Participate in your local government by attending a meeting and becoming aware of what’s in your community.

• Stay outside. OK, the debate starts at 9 p.m. By then, the kids will be off to bed, and it may be too cool for most people to sit outside. Before the sun sets, however, spend some time outdoors. Watch your neighbors walking and speak with them, admire the abundance of birds and butterflies currently in our community, speak with your neighbor.

No one of these activities is going to right civil society overnight. But breaking away from the extremes that drive our politics on the night that the extremes are most intent on sucking people into their obsessive world sends a powerful statement.

Half the country is going to be angry no matter who wins in November. There’s no fixing that overnight. But taking one night discover there are more important things than politics can set us on a foot to rediscovering our community and identity as Americans.

From there, healing can begin.

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