A couple of months ago the internet blew up when Pepsi released an ad that ended up being an ill received social commentary-and even had the audacity to cast a Kardashian family member in the starring role. People are sick and tired of the Social Justice Warrior (SJW for short) crowd lecturing the rest of us on how we are just awful people for having beliefs that do not dovetail with theirs. In the wake of the Pepsi ad the movement ate their own-devouring Ms. Kendall Jenner on everything from NBCNews.com to the Twitter-verse known as Black Twitter. After all how could a white girl possibly know what the Black Lives Matter movement is all about? The hubris!

This week Heineken came out with an ad of their own. Truthfully when I saw the discussions of this online I expected the same twaddle that Pepsi served up. Coexist and tolerance, don’t you know? But in the case of Heineken, I saw something that perhaps many groups could learn from in these trying times we all find ourselves in. Day in and day out I talk to people from all different political walks of life in my work. From leftists to conservatives and everything in between. One thing that they all seem to have in common-they are exhausted by our current political climate. Doesn’t matter if you supported Trump, Hillary or Bernie in that hot mess known as Election 2016. All of us are burned the hell out on politics. So when I watched the ad below I thought, “Oh great, another lecture on tolerance and coexistence from people who don’t want to coexist  with me if I do not agree with them”. That is not what I found. I think that if we look a little deeper into this ad, what we might see is something we could all learn from.

Let me tell you something, the greatest gains I have made in politics were after sitting down with some great folks after being handed my backside by the opposition-within my own party-over a drink (or two, but who’s counting). Maybe it was my general miasma, my mental and physical exhaustion, but after imbibing a few adult beverages I was better able to see the other side’s viewpoints with a little more clarity.  I am not saying we should all go out and get blind drunk with a group of Alt-Right loons or equally frightening-a gaggle of basement dwelling Antifa thugs. I am talking about sitting down over a beverage to have something that this country doesn’t remember how to have anymore-an adult conversation about the areas in which we disagree with one another politically. In the age of social media it is so simple to create echo chamber after echo chamber in which we, and our political allies, justify our roiling rage at the other side and make broad sweeping statements about those folks with regularity. I have seen it play out to the point where I felt compelled to warn people on our side that they were careening down a slippery slope towards shades of totalitarianism usually adhered to by the opposition. Referring to those who did not agree with them in 2016, the same people they fought side by side with for years, as an “infestation”. This is a dangerous path folks.

Do we continue down the path that we are opposed to? Do we simply become the mirror image of the people that we profess to hate-draping ourselves in moral righteousness and the flag while calling for the same things that the left is calling for-but only for our opposition? Perhaps instead of parroting Sam the Eagle from the Muppets we should be getting together with some folks who push us out of our political comfort zone a little more often over a few pints at our local. With the way this country is headed, I honestly cannot think that anything worse than what is playing out across the metropolitan areas of our country could happen. And at the very least-even if you cannot come to any kind of rational agreement on politics-perhaps you can both agree that your beverage of choice is lovely.