Tough Questions: The Other Side

This week’s Discover Challenge is to consider tough questions that we’ve been asked. I can think of a tough question I was asked after the U.S. Presidential Election that is head and shoulders above other questions. I was in the local bookstore which is a gathering place for university folks. Knowing my background was in finance and economics, with a smattering of political science, some former students and a couple of university faculty cornered me. Here comes the tough question.

They asked me what I thought the appeal of President-Elect Trump is to the man on the street. Why is this a tough question? I happen to be a Democrat and I did not vote for Donald Trump. Their questions were a little more complex than that. Most of them were also Democrats and they wanted specifics. I was put in the position of having to look at the other side of the issues in order to explain the thinking of the people who elected him. Tough questions!

Expressing to them that what I was about to say was only my opinion and hoping (to myself) that I was going to convey correct information, we started to have a conversation. I was very tempted to grab my phone and call in reinforcements – my friends who had actually voted for Mr. Trump, but I didn’t.

I won’t go into all the specifics but I will give you the general conversation. I told them that all I could give them was my opinion. Yes, it was my opinion based on fact. My facts were based on those provided by both the media and what I had read and gleaned myself. Since I had not discovered every fact about why the country preferred to elect Donald Trump as President of the United States but had gotten some of the information from the media, I did not feel comfortable answering their questions. I further expressed that I felt my opinions and bias as a Democrat would color my explanation.

The group still wanted me to explain why I thought he was elected. I made a few comments. I was more comfortable answering their questions since I had already told them that I was only expressing my own opinion.

Separating opinion from fact is extremely important when answering tough questions. #amwriting #amblogging #writing #weeklydiscoverychallenge