Jim Gaffigan: Disagree with Someone? Calling Them a Moron Won't Help | Best of '16 | Big Think

If you have a problem with the patriarchy or with white people, you’d look at me and you’d go, this guy invented white people because he’s so white. He probably invented slavery. He probably was resistant to women voting.

So the weird thing is I do feel like sometimes even people talking about Trump or some outlandish conservative opinion will kind of present things to me that are like, well, you know, some people don’t support gay marriage like you maybe. And I’m like, just because I look, you know, like a prototypical white guy villain who wants to kick immigrants out, I’m not. I mean, that’s a form of bigotry.

Anyway, I’m a great guy. I grew up in a small town in Indiana, and I feel as though living in New York or in LA or even Chicago, there is this dismissiveness to people with different opinions where rather than explaining our point of view, we’d rather be right. John Kerry was running for president versus Bush; there was this – I feel like there was this collective thing like anyone who votes for Bush is an idiot. And I’m like, that’s not how you convince people to – that’s not how you persuade someone.

And I feel like being from a red state or from a flyover area that sometimes people on the East Coast or in LA, there is this dismissiveness of people that hold differing viewpoints. Rather than having a discussion, there’s just kind of like, well, they’re morons. And the thing that worries me about people that are supportive of Trump or angry about Trump, there’s this absence of dialogue. Instead of saying to someone that supports Trump, like, what is it? What is it that you like? There is this self-satisfaction of like, you’re an idiot. And that’s not how you convince someone.

And I think that there’s also this kind of denial that I think we exist in when it comes to Trump or people of radical opinions that we emotionally disagree with, is that there are moments when they talk. Where we go, well, that’s a decent point. But we never admit to that. When Trump talks, when he gives speeches, because everyone watching this has watched Trump. I mean, I stopped working to watch him because it’s entertainment.

It’s not as if he’s not articulate at communicating an idea. It’s not that there aren’t moments that we don’t identify with some of his ideas. Overall, again, emotionally we might disagree wholeheartedly, but we might identify with some of the fear. We might identify with the sheer raw kind of like, I don’t want to lose. I want greatness. We all identify. That’s not that foreign. It’s not speaking a different language.

But I think there’s also some geography that we forget that I think that sometimes there is similar to how we get our news. Like there are people that watch Fox. There are people that watch MSNBC. I’m a news junkie, and there was a time when I brought up, yeah, Fox news, and my friends were like, how dare you watch that. And I’m like, I would go to the Soviet Union when it still existed. It doesn’t mean I’m a Marxist, you know. It doesn’t mean I support communism.

I just think it’s weird that I – maybe I personally – I like having friends that like comedians that I perform with that open for me on the road. I had a guy who was a libertarian, and then the next guy who opened for me was an Occupy Wall Street guy. And all three of us are friends. I kind of like people with different opinions. And I’m not dismissive of – I mean, I might casually say you’re crazy, but I mean, I love these people, and I also learn from them.

So anyway, my point is I’m a great guy.