The Snake Under the Bed

The reason we can’t seem to work with people who disagree with us…

Who is ready for me to wildly overstretch a metaphor? 🙋‍♂️ 🥴

You and your family or a friend walk into a normal hotel room - perhaps like the one pictured here.

Let’s do a little inventory, shall we? There is that worthless desk that is never used for actual work and always becomes the place where your key cards, ice bucket, and iPad charger end up. Then we have the chair or lounge in the corner that no one has ever sat on for any reason ever. Honestly, it is just a soft place for you to throw your carryon or winter coat.

There isn’t much else, really. We have a flatscreen TV bolted to the wall and a big bed in the middle with a nightstand or two that, apparently, no longer contain a Gideon Bible.

Now, imagine an enormous snake slithers past you and heads directly under the bed.

What do you do? Where do you instinctually go? Not to the bed, that’s for sure. There’s an enormous snake somewhere amidst the unwashed comforter (ew) and tightly-tucked sheets.

Assuming you can’t just run out of the room, abandon your family, and start a new life in a non-snake-harboring region of the world (my personal choice), you would choose to find whatever wall is furthest from the bed and you glue yourself to it without ever taking your eyes off of the bed itself - you know, just in case the snake decides to use the bed as a springboard to attempt to sink it’s fangs directly into your jugular.

This is sensible behavior. Get as far from the dangerous threat as possible while never taking your attention off of your unpredictable (and quite evil, I might add) enemy.

Now imagine your family or friend in the room (who happened to be on the other side of the room when the snake showed up - probably looking out the window at the sweet view of the parking lot) is also pressed up against a wall. Only they chose the opposite wall and now all that stands between you is a king-sized bed and a slithering nightmare factory.

You are both terrified of snakes. This. Is. A. Problem.

So, frozen in fear, you both make wild eye contact with the other as you silently plead for them to join you on your wall.

“C’mon! Two are better than one!” your eyes seem to say.

“You c’mon! You just want the snake to eat me so you can get away,” replies the gaze of your loved one with undisguised malice.

It’s true.

That was the plan.

Stalemate.

(Why is no one just talking out loud in my little nightmare scenario? Because snakes can smell fear and speak most world languages quite fluently. Duh.)

Neither of you are willing to join the other in solidarity because it would require meeting in or moving through the center of the room. And that’s where there is a psychotic, cold-blooded killer whose only purpose in life is to murder you with pinprick teeth and sacs of poison that were solely created to inject into your body. (I don’t know if it’s coming through but I have a, shall we say, HEALTHY fear of snakes.)

Even though two of you might stand some chance fighting together against this reptilian monster, you are frozen against your respective walls.

This, my friends, is what I am calling the Snake Under the Bed Problem.

Modern Republicans Democrats humans struggle to meet people on the other ideological side of the biggest problems of our day. We fear the position of the other. And we especially fear the middle ground - so much so that we find the most extreme place of distance from our counterparts and our fears and we freeze there.

But why do we fear the middle so much?

There isn’t really a venomous snake in between different sides of the political aisle on taxation or abortion or gun control or immigration or anything else where the country feels sharply divided. There isn’t really a chance of being bitten by a cold-blooded emissary of hell if we disagree on some nuance of church life or public policy or school board shenanigans or some other suburban American values.

The middle, you see, is dangerous because it means leaving the known safety of your wall. You can’t see what the middle is like. And, for all you know, the snake is actually on near the other wall now. So it could be even more dangerous than the middle? How would you even know?

Best to play it safe on your wall.

Now, remember that you’re friends. Neighbors. Or even family. Pretty similar at the end of the day. But there is a problem to solve (which might even seem scarier than it really is) and it simply requires you to come together to make a plan.

Before long, you forget that the snake is even the issue and you start to become frustrated with the person on the opposite wall.

Why won’t they move this direction?!? What is wrong with them?!? Clearly it’s safe over here - this is obviously the right position!

Maybe the snake isn’t the problem. Maybe the person on the other wall is the real enemy.

And, just like that, the goal has gone from solving a problem to avoiding becoming like the enemy. And the middle, which once represented the only way through which you might solve the problem, now represents the possibility that you might unintentionally end up on the other wall - like you’ll get too close to the position of your sworn enemy and, before you know it, will be on that side yourself.

Is this making sense? Let’s leave the metaphor for a minute to clarify.

It is as if there is an invisible threshold between us and those we disagree with that we fear crossing, as if looking for compromise or friendship with someone with an opposing worldview might actually find us adopting their viewpoint altogether. The real fear is not the problem anymore but, rather, the slippery slope of belief.

And the fear we hold is rooted in our own insecurity. If our worldview is so weakly formed that it can’t stand up to a cup of coffee with someone who opposes it, we might not have much of a worldview after all.

We treat any allowance of nuance in complicated conversations as a snake under the bed not to be approached. Instead we race to the edges, the farthest corners of consideration. We get as far from the opposing viewpoint as we can so as to create as much perceived safety as possible. And then, once we feel safe and settled, we begin to question anyone who isn’t as committed to our wall as we are.

But hugging the wall doesn’t deal with the problem, does it? It actually puts us as far from the problem as possible.

This, in my overly simplistic and snake-fearing brain, is what is happening in our larger political, cultural, and ideological landscape. The race to the extremes is less about the average American being more extreme in political/social/cultural/ideological belief and more about the average American being more fearful of the middle, that place where cherished values get diluted and distorted and eventually destroyed.

We have become so opposed to the opposition’s view of our shared problem that we’ve allowed the opposition to become the problem.

And, in that twisted world, keeping our distance from their poisonous rhetoric and belief is the only safe place to be.

I’m certainly not suggesting anyone abandon their convictions. If anything, I might be suggesting the opposite. Be firm enough in your convictions that you no longer fear getting caught watching the “wrong” cable news network or - gasp - being in real relationship with someone who holds a different worldview.

Can we summarize?

Snakes are bad. A snake under the bed is scary. Tucking your bedsheets too at the bottom can be uncomfortable. People disagree on this. Some want to tuck. Some want no tuck. The extremes are expanding and growing further apart. And we have some mid-term elections this fall and (trigger warning) another presidential campaign cycle ramping up right after that.

I hope I’ve helped.

- KB