Table Talk by Tom Bie Yellow Dog Community and

Table Talk By Tom Bie – The Drake Magazine

Two dozen flyfishers were gathered around a lodge dining-room in fall of 2016. It was early morning on a beautiful, sunny, high-country Colorado day, and we’d come together to fish in a low-key fundraiser. Several people hovered near the kitchen, selecting warm pastries off a table. Others mingled and made introductions next to a window that looked out over prime, riverfront real estate. Three men sat together on a couch watching the morning news, until an image of Hilary Clinton flashed on the screen, prompting one of them to get up and loudly proclaim, “That stupid bitch!” as he walked away shaking his head.

My initial reaction wasn’t one of agreement or disagreement; it was a question: “What kind of man thinks twenty other anglers want to hear his political views shouted across a crowded room at 7 a.m. on a Saturday? His opinion wasn’t what offended me—I would’ve felt no differently had he given a similar perspective on Donald Trump. What was offensive is that he felt compelled to share it.

Endless pre-holiday editorials warn of the wreckage political discussions can bring to a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, with MAGA-hat wearing Uncle Norm seated across from Sienna, his niece, a sophomore at Sarah Lawrence. Precautions are sensible in these familial settings, but when that Yuletide meal is over, Norm will head back to Tulsa and Sienna to Brooklyn. At a flyfishing lodge, both may be stepping onto the same skiff in the morning. And they’ll have six more dinners to go.

There is but one obvious solution, right? The timehonored cliché of “no religion or politics at the dinner table.” This rule can work, or can be made to work, if a host is up for enforcing it. But there is another, less authoritarian answer: remembering that your packing list for the trip did not include your personal grievances, misplaced anger, and bitter political resentments. Walt Whitman may have written the words first, but it took Ted Lasso—the hero we need—to make them famous over a game of darts: “Be curious, not judgmental.”

I have spent nearly thirty years sitting around fishinglodge and skiing-lodge dinner tables, from the Yukon to the Alps to the Amazon jungle, and the conversations I’ve been fortunate enough to hear and partake in have been as memorable, educational, and entertaining as the fishing and skiing itself, sometimes more so. And yes, politics was often part of those discussions. Indeed, politics made for some of the best discussions, but only when guests with differing viewpoints brought good faith and humility to the table, which used to be more common.

We’re in different times now. And this isn’t nostalgia talking. Nearly half of all Americans have stopped talking politics with someone. Reports from lodge owners, hosts, booking agents, and outfitters have shown an increasing number of guest experiences being negatively impacted by the brazen political opinions and outspokenness of certain other guests they shared a week with. We can’t expect America’s political divide to magically close after a plane ride to the Caribbean. But since friendly debate is, or ought to be, partly a search for common ground, any two anglers should at least feel an ounce of unity in their shared love of chasing fish in faraway places. And that’s a start.

Besides, even if every guest in a room generally agrees politically, there’s a fair chance that some of them took a vacation partly as a break from politics of any kind. In other words, communal time at a lodge isn’t just about respecting everyone’s political views, it’s about recognizing that a dinner table holds a captive audience from which no one should feel a compelling need to “escape.”

If you’re the kind of political junkie who just can’t help yourself in this scenario, then at least table the debate until after supper, when you can meet your sparring partner on the back deck and loudly ignore each other’s talking points mano a mano over a bottle of Beam. Remember, this is for everyone else at the lodge. Because it’s their week, too, and nothing screams unrelaxed and joyless like a dinner stuck between alpha-males mansplaining climate change.