(gentle music) - [Narrator] Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund.

(upbeat music) - Good evening and welcome to "The Hinckley Report."

I'm Jason Perry, director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics.

Joining us tonight, we have Tim Shriver, founder of Project UNITE, Maura Carabello, president of The Exoro Group, and Boyd Matheson, host of Inside Sources on KSL NewsRadio.

So glad to have you on this special episode of "The Hinckley Report."

We'd just finished our midterm elections.

We're in the holidays.

We're together with family, and sometimes we're talking about politics.

And tonight, we're gonna really get into how we talk about the issues that are facing us as a nation, as a state.

And Tim, I'm gonna start with you because you have have launched what we're calling the Dignity Index.

I want you to describe what this is, because it is such a great way to approach what we're hearing on TV and how we view and interpret what's coming to us from our elected officials.

- Yeah, thanks for having me, Jason.

And welcome to everybody heading into Thanksgiving and these special time of the year.

You know, you mentioned that we're talking about the issues, and I think in some ways what the Dignity Index is, is an attempt to introduce a new issue.

We think of the issues as immigration or taxes or crime or other kinds of things like that.

What we've found is that there's another issue in the country, that people are starving for a break from the contempt and hatred and divisiveness in our country, that it's hurting us deeply.

It's hurting us emotionally.

It's hurting our relationships in our families.

Some would suggest that almost a third of Americans have ended a relationship in their family over politics.

So we think there's a new issue.

And the issue is not a political issue, but it's an interpersonal issue, how we treat each other, how we talk to each other when we disagree.

So the Dignity Index is our attempt to introduce to families, to businesses, and to politics, a new way of solving problems by not treating others with hatred and contempt, but rather seeing the possibility of solving the problem by treating others with dignity.

- Uh-huh, Maura, talking about treating people with dignity, let's talk about how this index works a little bit, because it's about taking speech, commercials, tweets, social media, and assigning a code to it.

Talk about what that means.

- So first, I wanna talk about how exciting it is that the pilot project is in Utah.

So this has rolled out for the very first time in the state of Utah.

We've got more work to do, but I love that Utahns are helping us index, that's what we're calling it.

It's an index.

It starts with one, it goes to eight.

The first four sort of describe and help us identify speech and language that may be on the contempt side.

The top ratings are for the eight.

But here's what's interesting, I just wanna start with this.

As people go to dignityindex.us and start looking at this, we have to change our brains.

It's not a rating system.

You won't end up saying, "Oh, that candidate was a 2.3."

This is really what Tim said.

It's about starting to internalize how we talk to each other.

Really importantly, how people who wanna hold offices of trust, how elected officials are speaking to each other as they ask us for their vote.

So we've put together an index with lots of help.

I think we'll talk about this later, lots of help from the University of Utah to start sussing out what are universally held points of view about types of speech that we're hearing, particularly in this instance, from elected officials.

- Uh-huh, well, we're gonna get into how we are all viewing this now that we sort of have this filter added to how we're listening to speech.

When we hear it, we read it, you know, we have the commercials through our airwaves, I want to maybe establish for a second what a Dignity Index is not.

This is not a score of how nice people are necessarily.

- That's right, this is not about speech police.

This is not about kumbaya, group hugs, or any kind of, you know, fake niceties that we can often get trapped into.

This is about how we speak in terms of elevating the conversation to something a little bit different.

I think in this country, we can talk about anything.

It's how we talk about it that actually matters.

And the way we've been talking about things has actually kept us a really safe distance from actually solving the problems.

So part of the Dignity Index for me is a self-awareness in terms of how am I approaching this.

Just because we disagree on something, am I now seeing them as the enemy?

Am I filled with contempt towards them because they disagree with me?

Because that contempt issue, the bottom end of the scale, means that because we disagree, you are worthless to me.

And so I can melt down your Twitter feed, I can blow up your social media, and I can feel good about myself and go to church on Sunday and just be great.

And so it's really getting us beyond just those very easy, very partisan kind of arguments and actually getting into conversations that lead us to good principles and good policy.

- Yeah, so Tim, we're gonna get into a couple examples, but maybe for a second, as you started this, you know, we talk about civility and how important to be civil, but this is a different level.

I'm wondering if you just kind of explain why you went from the scale of, you know, this as one to eight, but the top of the scale is dignity - [Tim] Yeah.

- which is a little different than just civility.

Talk about why you approach it that way.

- Well, here's the thing, as Boyd is saying and Maura's reminding us, the way we talk to each other is sometimes hidden from us.

We sometimes think we can convince someone of our point of view by humiliating them.

And we don't stop to pause and say, "Wait a second, is that likely to work?

Is it likely to be successful that by calling you names, by accusing you of horrible qualities, by humiliating you for your position, you're gonna be one over?"

The answer is clearly no.

Actually, what works to actually win people over, just practically speaking, is letting them be seen and heard and feel like their point of view matters to, even if you disagree with it.

So we're not trying to tell people to suppress your point of view.

We're trying to say that in the other is, God given if I can use that language, dignity.

Don't violate it.

Don't attack in a way that is likely to make that person to send towards the same kind of acrimony and hatred.

And let's also be clear, the stakes here are high for our country.

We've looked at this through history.

Violent sounding speech leads to violence.

Hatred leads to violence.

It's not just divisiveness, which is problematic.

It's not just emotional pain or relationship breakdowns, which are very painful.

But it's also the risk to the cultural fabric and to being able to solve problems that matter.

So dignity is a notch higher than being nice or civil.

It's actually seeing in the other some of yourself.

- But what's great about that is the indexes about us.

- Yeah, - I mean we're using the index in a political format to talk about speech we hear in public.

But it also...

I have found one of the things, we were talking about this before the show, one of the things when you look at the index and start thinking about it more, how much you are being more thoughtful about how and what you choose to say.

And it is also important to me what Tim said about this is a persuasive tool.

You're actually not giving up your core beliefs.

You're finding a better way to share those with someone else who's coming from a different point of view.

- Go, Boyd.

- I think that's so important and in terms of how we look at that kind of speech and where it actually leads us.

This is not designed to suddenly change the behavior of elected officials across the country.

We have to remember and recognize that... - [Tim] It be nice if it did.

- It would be nice if it did.

And ultimately, I think it will.

But we have to remember that it's community and culture that lead and the politicians will follow.

So this is not gonna be a top down, suddenly politicians are gonna say, "Oh, I'm gonna do this."

It's gonna be culture and community saying, "We don't accept that kind of contempt anymore.

We demand dignity in our speech because we're doing it.

We're living it in all areas of our lives."

- It's funny that...

It's funny as Boyd's saying this.

It's funny that we design something as a grading tool, but what it's turned out to be most powerful as is a mirror.

So we think, "Oh, I'm gonna grade Boyd on what he just said."

But when I look at the tool and I pull it up on my phone, I think to myself, "Wow, I use that language."

And what we hear from people almost universally, and this is why Utah is such an interesting pilot, because there is an openness to the concept of dignity in this state.

And there is an innovative quality to the state.

And there is a sense in this state that people are hungry for an alternative.

So we're just getting started, but we are learning a tremendous amount as people are willing to use this index to see themselves first.

And as Boyd points out, if we start to see the way we talk to each other in a new way, then the politicians, I'm sorry to say cuz I come from a political family, they will follow.

I'm sorry to say, probably, not lead.

- Yeah, well, what's interesting, you talk about this being a mirror.

We had an opportunity to teach 22 students from the University of Utah how to analyze, based on this scale, some of the speech.

And some of them talk about how this becomes a mirror and how it's adding to how they interpret what they hear and reflect that as well.

So I wanna show this video, 'cause we interviewed a couple of them, about how this worked in their lives.

And then we'll talk about some examples.

- Hi, my name is Steven Lehnhof.

I'm a political science major here at The U.

- My name is Iradukunda Esperance.

- My name is Madeleine Jones.

- My name is Susie Estrada and I am a student at the University of Utah.

- The Dignity Index is like a way that we've come up with to try to help people in general and politicians specifically, kind of measure the dignity they're using in their speech.

- It's an eight point scale, so one to four is content and four to eight is recognizing other people's dignity.

- It's looking at how to humanize people regardless again of their values, their views.

- So at first, beginning the Dignity Index Project, I learned how to code.

So we were trained on the codings.

And then me and Steven moved over to pulling the passages and the contexts for the coders.

- I would get an email telling me they wanted this specific, whether it was tweets or whether it was speeches, and I would go spend a couple hours just kind of gathering a whole bunch of excerpts that we could work with.

And then we send those excerpts to the bigger group of coders.

- Within that group, we would rank it against our actual printed scale and say, "Okay, this looks to be a four."

And then sometimes we'd have disagreements among our own groups and we would try and come to terms with that and figure out what it actually is.

- So after that discussion and understanding and learning from each other, I think the learning process was very important.

Being able to then decide, "Okay, well, after this discussion I think that yeah, a six would be the best way to go because of this.

This made sense to me."

So that helped to eliminate some bias.

- I think what surprised me most from my end was seeing the reactions of the politicians when I was...

I'm looking at their tweets pretty much every day from my role.

And at the beginning it was normal, but as soon as the scores were released, the politicians would start to tweet about the scores and their like of them, or usually their dislike of them.

- I think the ways that my thoughts about political dialogue have changed through this experience have been internalizing that dialogue as a tool.

- And I feel like for those that don't know the Dignity Index and don't know what it is, I feel like should definitely explore it and get to know what it is.

- Politics doesn't need to be synonymous with divisiveness, like I think it's coming to be.

And I think that if everybody, even just had a chance to read through the score, they don't even need to necessarily see it scored on people.

Because even that can sometimes bring up all thoughts of who's better, who's worse.

But if you could just read the index, it makes you think about, "Well, what's a more inclusive way to say this?

And a more inclusive way to say that."

- The great thing about it is everyone can understand it because it's really just about how we treat each other.

It's not judging policy or anybody's political beliefs.

It's about what's going, who's the most cooperative, and who really treats everyone with dignity and respect.

- It's so interesting when you hear it through the lens of these students.

And what was interesting is I've talked with these students as well.

It's like, we talk about dignity for ourselves, but they're also talking about appreciating the dignity and other people that we're hearing from.

Talk about that for a second 'cause I wanna go through some examples after that.

- Well, it's so interesting because a lot of what you hear the students describing is something we teach in school.

And we've taught for many years.

We teach for instance in how to be curious and not furious.

- Yeah.

- Right?

How to be able to disagree without being disagreeable.

And a couple years ago, we went and talked to kids about what was going on in the country and they said, "Look, we're not the problem.

Adults are the problem.

The bullies are in politics, not in schools."

So it reminds us, when you hear the students talk, that there's a sense in which we have to own, in the media, in political life, in culture, business, we have to own the extent to which we can shift from being people who think that we win by defeating, by demeaning, and instead, win by problem solving and being curious, and like I say, not furious.

- It taps into this larger movement that we've spent some time in the justice community in which there's really important efforts to change hearts and minds and have public discussions.

But what I like about this is it focuses on behaviors and behaviors are changeable.

And behaviors are what impact and set the table for the public space and public dialogue.

And so the achievability of this is that it is a behavioral change we all can make.

We're still holding our same opinions, right?

- [Boyd] Yeah, yeah, that's right.

- But we're asking for a social contract that says, "This is what we accept when you're in the public domain, specifically, in policy."

- Hey, can we get a couple examples?

And Boyd, I want you to take this first one because it... We're gonna talk about what the number was that was given, but it's beyond just what that number.

It's to the heart of how we receive these things and to what is coming.

Let's give an example of a three.

We had a couple commercials.

This first one, a three.

It's kind of the hallmark of this is, I'm just gonna tell you in advance, "We're the good people.

They're the bad people.

It's us versus them."

This is an approach.

Let's watch this video and talk about how this is at play.

- I know what it would do to my business if I didn't get paid.

I think if people knew that Evan McMullin had stiffed people that tried to help him, $600,000.

Just think about what these people are going through.

And I don't think he thinks about 'em at all.

He got what he needed and he's moved on.

It's not right.

And what's sad about it is people in Utah are good people.

I think Utah needs a payday for Evan McMullin, that's the trademark of a conman.

Once you've been burned, it's hard to go back.

- [Narrator] Club for Growth Actions is responsible for the content of the ad.

- Dignity to contempt, this one was a three.

This is us versus them.

- Yeah, and also getting at the intentions of the other person, trying to read their moral character and assigning some of those things.

And I think it's really important as we go through this, part of what Tim said in terms of historically, we've had this idea of win over rather than win with.

Or to Maura's point, this is not about everybody agreeing on everything.

Oneness is not sameness in America.

We want that to be different.

And so to me the real history, if you go all the way back to Aristotle, Aristotle said that political life in a free society was the humanizing arena for moderating conflict and pursuing the common good.

Now think about that, centuries before the internet and social media, a humanizing arena, not dehumanizing, not demonizing, but humanizing, that personal connection to it.

And then moderating the conflict, not escalating it or exacerbating it.

And then get into the common good rather than just the political power good for the few that are in charge.

- And one way you can filter that as you watch these commercials.

So again, I'm gonna own that I'm a practitioner and I'm also going to own, we have had many conversations during election cycles, Jason, where we talk about negative campaigns.

And the reality is negative campaigns keep happening because we keep buying them.

People say, "Oh, I hate them."

Well, we don't because politics are the sure fire mirror.

And they don't do things that aren't effective.

Campaigns don't do things.

But what you can ask yourself when you watch commercials, we're gonna see, I think, another one - Yes.

- maybe on the contempt side is the persuasive notion in that campaign is us and them, right?

What you're buying into if you find that appealing to you, it's because you liked, you responded well to which, am I on the good side, right?

I'm with the good guy.

The persuasive factor was an emotional manipulation about how good people are.

- Uh-huh, so... - We've actually been... We've actually been conditioned to respond inappropriately to negative-based emotions like anger, fear, and frustration.

- Maybe why we see these.

- Yeah, - Right.

- Tim, let's do this next one.

This was coded as a four, another political commercial, which four was, "We're better than those people.

And I don't trust them."

That would be, let's have that filter on as we watch this next commercial.

- [Narrator] After 12 years in Washington, whose side is Mike Lee on?

When veterans exposed to toxic chemicals, like Agent Orange, needed funding for VA benefits, Mike Lee said no.

When 9/11 first responders needed healthcare funding, Mike Lee was one of only two senators who said no.

And Mike Lee was the only senator in America who said no to new legislation to fight opioids and fentanyl.

Mike Lee, it's time to say no to him.

Put Utah First PAC is responsible for the content of this advertising.

- Okay, on the contempt side of the scale, Tim, and this is this idea about making sure we don't trust people, putting 'em in the category of people we don't trust.

- Yeah, so what viewers are looking at right now, a lot of people are saying, "Yeah, but that was right, you know?"

"Yeah, but that is Mike Lee," or "That is Evan McMullin."

And I'm listening to the viewer, I'm listening to the conversation on the other side of the screen right now and they're saying, "But what if I think that's true?"

- [Jason] Yes.

- As we've said here, the index, the score isn't trying to say that all opinions are the same.

And it's not trying to say that all principles are the same.

Some people, "I'm not gonna compromise on my principles," don't, please don't.

Would hate to have a country where people compromise their principles.

Violations certainly of one of mine.

What we are saying is when we disagree, don't use that tactic.

Don't use that tactic because then you demean your own principle.

So on both of those ads, in my view, one a little bit more extreme than the other, you see the demeaning of the principles of the person that you're trying to support by using a tactic that is simply designed to humiliate or treat with contempt your opponent.

That's not the right strategy for solving problems.

It doesn't work.

It leads to fracturing, detention, and to log jams in problem solving.

So the only thing we know about contempt for sure is that if you don't wanna solve a problem and if you don't want to ease divisions and if you don't wanna prevent violence, use hatred and contempt, you're guaranteed to get all three of the opposites.

- Interesting word, tactic, that you use in there.

And so good, on this scale, at least we learned to see it for what it is.

- Yeah.

- How about a couple examples that were higher on the dignity scale?

Maura, I'd like to play one for you.

This was the Congressional District 4 debate.

This is Darlene McDonald.

And this was coded as a six, to get to other side of the scale a bit.

This is, "We always talked to other side and we search for shared values in interest."

This gets to what Tim was talking about.

What if we have some dialogue that kind of gets to that point?

Let's watch this one.

- It is not okay to use that as a personal attack against your neighbor.

Love thy neighbor.

I take that very little.

I take that to mean that we should at least know who our neighbors are and get to know our neighbors and have conversations with them, to be able to even break bread with them.

It is good when you can share good meal with people, even with people that you don't agree with.

You can at least come to some common ground, some common consensus.

But we don't have that today in our politic because it's always about getting one up over the other.

- Maura, I want your take on this.

As I listen to it, it's just interesting cuz summon the political world, and you've advised many, would see comments like that as being the weak approach.

- Right, I mean, and I wanna put context to it for our viewers.

I'm always aware, as many of our viewers know, who are highly engaged, that was during a congressional debate in which in fact the incumbent wasn't there.

But I think that the dialogue exists, whether we see these racist or competitive or not, I don't want people to say, "Wait a minute, that only exists if it's not heated."

- Right?

- And I don't think that that's true.

She was able to offer a point of view that was about her philosophy.

Then they go on later to still find space to talk about disagreements and talk about the issues.

But that insertion shouldn't be seen as a weakness.

Now, I will tell you, and I've talked about this as we've indexed, there are going to be times and places I think.

So for example, the highest form of eight is really coming to some level of consensus.

And I think that for me on this scale exists predominantly after you're elected.

I have a high expectation that sevens and eights should exist in the body electorate.

So whether that's the Senate or the House or a city council, I expect that that be their goal.

In a debate, I doubt we're gonna see many eights because it's sort of not the forum.

But the question on the index is, are you always seeking to clarify your position without needing to show contempt as the major differentiator between you and your opponent, and that's why you saw a high score there.

- Uh-huh, we didn't see any eights this time as we were coding, but we did see a seven.

Boyd, I wanna talk about this one.

And the idea behind a seven is that we are fully engaged with the other side, discussing hard issues so we know where they are coming from.

This was the 3rd Congressional Debate with John Curtis with his statement.

- Well, if you know anything about me, you know, I like to talk about this.

I'm kind of the rare elephant in the room on climate change.

Listen, I think it's important on climate to do something which we don't generally do in this conversation.

And that is if you draw a continuum and you take people where they are on this issue and you evaluate everybody's opinion, we can have a very thoughtful conversation about how we reduce emissions and how we pass on an Earth better to our children than the one we inherited.

- Boyd?

- So as you look at that, it really is such a great example of, if that was a contempt argument, there would've been a whole bunch of pejoratives on the front end of, you know, crazy this and green new deal that, but instead he started from a place of curiosity.

So contempt actually kills curiosity and prevents us from having bigger, broader, more elevating discussions.

And what Representative Curtis did there was just that said, "Look, I'm a rare person in this space," but I wanna know why you think that's a good idea.

I wanna know why you think this will help us deal with this particular issue.

And so we have to be careful.

One of the leading byproducts of contempt is that it kills curiosity.

And I'm one who believes that losing our curiosity is what puts us in our isolated bubbles.

And lack of curiosity is a real threat to our constitutional republic.

- And what I love about this example, is for Representative Curtis, he's navigating largely his own caucus in many ways, right?

So that is a Republican likely trying to be persuasive to other Republicans.

- But it's also, it's not just killing.

It's killing kills curiosity.

It kills also the opportunity to solve problems.

- Yeah, exactly.

- So any problem of the whole is gonna require the whole, and any system that is designed to break the whole apart will make it impossible to solve problems.

Whatever your position is on climate, there's only one way to solve it.

And that's with everybody working on it together.

- That's right.

- Otherwise it doesn't get solved no matter what you believe.

Same thing is true on most problems.

If you think of big divisive issues, guns, immigration, abortion, things like this, I'm not afraid of those issues because I actually think there are ways to solve the meat, the heart of those issues when we actually listen to people across the spectrum.

It's not gonna please everybody and principles will prevail in one situation or another.

But let's not be naive here.

We're talking about a practical strategy for actually moving the country forward.

No, there's... You know, people say, "Well, what about free speech?"

I'll tell you what stops free speech, hatred.

- Yeah.

- I'll tell you what suppresses free speech, treating people with contempt.

Then everybody goes, "Hmm, I'm not saying anything.

No, I'm afraid."

So we're trying to not just open the door to civility and dignity, but open the door to the freedom to express oneself so that we can actually integrate the best of each other.

- [Jason] Last 30 seconds, go ahead.

- I think what Tim hits so powerfully there is we often end up with either a silent majority or a secret majority.

So yeah, hate is the real killer of free speech because we either go silent or we go secret and then we can never get to solving any kind of problem.

- And we just gotta say, I know we're out time.

As people go to Thanksgiving, look at the dignityindex.us.

- Yes, that's right.

- Pull it up on your phone and think about that uncle, that cousin, that nephew, that brother, that sister, that parent, and just try to practice - Yes, it's at our own.

- this year.

- Perfect.

Such a great conversation and important, thank you.

And thank you for watching "The Hinckley Report."

The show is also available as a podcast on pbsutah.org/hinckleyreport or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for being with us.

We'll see you next week.

(upbeat music)