Our Own Facts? Contesting Truth in a Polarized Age

A firsthand witness to January 6 recounts a surreal argument at a casual gathering. Sherman Tylawsky, founder of the George Washington Institute and host of the Friends and Fellow Citizens podcast, reflects on the emotional weight of hearing the event dismissed as fictional, even as he recalls being locked down inside the Capitol. The conversation explores where disagreement breaks down: when people no longer share basic facts. Rather than escalate, Tylawsky models a strategy of grounding conflict in shared values: rejecting violence and reaffirming democratic norms. It’s a powerful look at how civic trust frays and how it might be rebuilt through principled, human-centered dialogue.

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Transcript

Michael Lee: [00:00:00] When we disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. We are pattern detection machines, but sometimes we're too good at our jobs. Humans see patterns in random data connections and coincidences, meaning and noise. This is the clustering illusion identified by Thomas Gilovich, and it makes us find significance where none really exists.

In disagreements, we build elaborate theories on random foundations, defending patterns that aren't really there. The clustering illusion creates relationship paranoia. For example, your partner happens to work late three Mondays in a row. Maybe that's an affair. Your teenager gets three texts during dinner.

Maybe they're hiding something. Your friend cancels plans a couple times. Maybe they're avoiding you on purpose. Random clusters feel meaningful. So we construct elaborate explanations for what [00:01:00] really needs no explanation. Coincidence becomes conspiracy. Workplace dynamics can suffer from clustering illusions too.

Two people quit in the same month. Maybe there's a management problem. Three projects fail. The strategy must be wrong. Several customers complain. Maybe we need a total overhaul. We react to random fluctuations as if they were meaningful trends, making dramatic changes based on what is really statistical noise.

Organizations pivot based on patterns that don't exist in political analysis. Clustering illusions create really false narratives. A few similar events becomes a quote, disturbing trend. Random demographic shifts becomes significant movements and unconnected. Unconnected incidents become coordinated Campaigns.

We connect dots that have no connection. Seeing conspiracies into these kinds of coincidences and media can amplify clustering, illusions, turning random noise into seemingly meaningful signals. Understanding clustering, illusions [00:02:00] can bring some calm to our chaos before seeing patterns ask whether randomness could explain the same data.

Looking for larger samples before drawing conclusions is really helpful. Remember that even in true randomness clusters can appear. They just don't mean anything in disagreements about patterns and trends. Demand more data. Sometimes what looks like a meaningful pattern is just the human brain doing what it's doing best, finding faces in clouds.

I'm Michael Lee, professor of Communication and Director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. Our guest today on Would We Disagree, is Sherman tki. Sherman is a political science doctoral candidate at the University of Alabama, and he's also the founder of the George Washington Institute and the host of the Friends and Fellow Citizens Podcast.

Sherman, tell us an argument story. 

Sherman Tylawsky: First of all, Mike, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. Great to talk with you today. [00:03:00] I'll go back to a couple summers ago, and it was like a family friends gathering. And one of our family friends brought someone he knew. We didn't know if he was a friend or someone, just someone he knew.

Anyway, it was a gentleman who came and he was, it was hard to, initially, it was hard to tell what he was, what he does for a living. So I wanna start with that. But he, all I knew is that he was involved in some sort of political commentary in some way, shape, or form. And turns out that this gentleman is someone who is basically a Q Anon conspiracy theorist kind of person.

Also had. Some sort of personality. On Telegram was one of the social media sites, mainly for conservatives. And we were having a conversation. This was outside, beautiful day. This is the summertime in Nevada, and we got the topic of Donald Trump and. We, he got [00:04:00] into, not necessarily like an argumentative sort of phase, but he talked a lot about the 2020 election and just the certain kind of theories that were going around at the time, about the mail-in ballots and so election, things like that.

Those kinds of claims. And we got to really the topic of January 6th. He shared a bit about how well he was at the rally and this and that. He apparently films a lot of his activities by broadcasting to his followers saying, oh, this might be going on, this might be happening here and there.

Of the government, and I was hearing all this and I always trying to understand what the other person is saying and I felt it was an opportunity for me to put out the facts that I understood about January 6th and about 2020 election. Now, for most people who hear that story, I think you wouldn't assume that it was a pretty normal conversation, maybe a [00:05:00] conversation you wouldn't have or around that time.

The only difference though is that I was an intern in the House of Representatives and evacuated and locked down on January 6th, 2021, and that encounter with someone who I understood did not, I did not understand very well, and certainly with any sort of human connection you need to get to know that person.

But I was troubled by the ignorance on the facts, and he is entitled his own opinion on all kinds of matters, including about Donald Trump and about many other things, which I think is something that we can all agree on. But I think just on the basic facts of what happened, to hear a completely different version of what I saw, what I experienced, that was a really.

Raw moment for me if I'm, if I just may say so. 

Michael Lee: Yeah. 

Sherman Tylawsky: And happy to get more into that, Mike, about Thank 

Michael Lee: you. 

Sherman Tylawsky: That conversation. 

Michael Lee: Yeah. How did he [00:06:00] characterize January 6th? 

Sherman Tylawsky: He saw it as basically like a fun rally where, people were just hanging out and. The events of the capitol were exaggerated.

That is what he's claiming. He claims that there wasn't really rioting, that it was Antifa doing crazy things. There basically described the whole day as almost as if you thought it was some sort of. Like a party that he was invited to, and he was a participant in, and he just said some people, like college students did crazy things, or something along the lines of that.

And as listeners and others will know that was not the case. And I say, I tell this story because I. I've heard too many stories both during my internship, during my time there. 'cause I still had to finish my internship after that day which was my third day of my internship, believe it or not.

Oh wow. 

But I [00:07:00] also got to talk with people who were affected by it, both on and off the record. And I just cannot let a day like that, regardless of people's political views, regardless of people's views on a lot of these issues. I cannot let a day be told in a completely different manner and be spun like that.

I think we can do better as a country when we talk about it, that like January 6th, 

Michael Lee: that's quite a way to begin an internship. 

Sherman Tylawsky: Yeah I can, I can't, couldn't believe what was going on and I was wondering, gosh, how do I tell people about this experience and I'm done with it. 

Michael Lee: So to characterize your style of disagreement or engagement in general, it sounds like, if I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying that when you encounter different political opinions, in many cases, you're happy and willing to let a thousand flowers bloom or to even not engage if somebody is disagreeing with you on immigration or insert issue [00:08:00] here.

But you said on this one you had to draw a line. That it's unacceptable to voice opinions in your presence without getting a response from you about certain things that are near and dear to your heart or near and dear to your experience. One of which would be January the sixth. Do I have that right?

Sherman Tylawsky: Yes, sir. I just wanted to say for going back to the title of your podcast When We Disagree. 

There are so many opportunities to disagree and it's something we should cherish clearly, but within that environment, we are all. In some way agreeing on how to disagree the terms of disagreement, shall we say.

And it's because we generally, in America, we believe in this idea of discourse. We believe in these ideas of disagreeing on the issues and not on the personalities and or I should say, not launching attacks on. People's personal lives and whatnot. That's generally something that would be a norm breaking sort of element.

[00:09:00] We generally accept accept and agree on just focusing our conversation about the issues. Just as I was trying to convey to the gentleman there, one thing I will say is during that interaction I've. Really believe that at that moment, given the circumstances, given the tongue context, I wanted this occasion to not go down a very strenuous path or path of tensions.

I've brought the conversation back to. These general ideals that we agree on as Americans that we should not believe in violence against law enforcement or against people we don't agree with. Bring back to the areas of agreement about. The value of history and remembering that the capital is a living, living memory, and a living institution of beautiful artwork and historic artifacts.

Just trying to bring those back out. And so it's really an [00:10:00] interesting. Multidimensional exercise of where we can agree, where we can disagree. I think with any area of disagreement in a democracy, you have to start with agreement with on the basic principles before you can engage. 

Michael Lee: Yeah, there's this, an old saw amongst debate people is that all debate starts from a point of agreement.

Which is at least that we should be having a debate and talking to one another in the first place. But there also does seem to push a little bit. There also does seem to be a role about the importance of disagreeing, about how we disagree. That's right. In other words, disagreeing about the terms by which we have agreed to have a conversation with one another, which is to say, how should citizens communicate, argue with.

And really come across one another in our democracy. And what's so interesting about your story is that it really gets to the heart of one of the things that I hear a lot, which is whatever happened to the fact? Whatever happened [00:11:00] to the point of agreement the point of the beginning of each conversation, especially about politics, should be that we agree on the basic facts.

Now, as a, some of, as a part-time cynic, I don't know if that world ever existed, but your story at least gets right to the heart of it, which is where you're faced with somebody denying or recharacterizing dramatically something that you personally experienced. 

Sherman Tylawsky: Exactly. It felt like. A moment of gaslighting to some degree, because here is someone who had I would call it the luxury of not having to be in the capital area on January 6th, and as were the vast majority of people.

And I felt that it was not just what, the fact that he was not interested in looking at the facts or at least acknowledging the facts or, and acknowledging that people were hurt after January 6th. But it was the fact that we could not get to a point where we were [00:12:00] trying to really understand our stories of how we understand politics.

One, some, I've been reading a book by Jefferson Fisher who was a trial attorney, and he wrote a book about conversations. And one of the things he said was, the person you talk to, or excuse me, the person is not the person you're talking to. And what he means by that is. We need to do a better job just generally of understanding why people feel a certain way.

Sometimes it could be because they don't have the good personality traits, but there are many times when, where we are not understanding the context of what people are going through. And so I really tried and get into that conversation with him where I don't know. This man very well. I don't know if he willingly knows that what he's saying is not true.

I don't know if he was deceived by somebody, but I felt it was very important for me to, going back to what we were talking about earlier, Mike, about setting the [00:13:00] terms for where we agree because otherwise. We can get to a very crazy point where people are effectively just talking past each other and at that point it's no longer a conversation, then it's just two people shouting at one another.

Michael Lee: How did he receive your experiences of January 6th? 

Sherman Tylawsky: He, I, what I can tell you, I guess he did not have many words to respond, thank goodness. I re really wanted to let everybody know that this was. Experience. I did not want anybody to go through including him. I would not want anybody to go through what I, not just what I went through, because what I went through was the least of it, what the Capitol police officers went through.

I have a very deep gratitude and appreciation for the Capitol Police, not just because of this event, because really my experiences just interacting with them. And I guess when there's somebody who decides, you know what, let's. [00:14:00] Let's set it where it is. Let's move on to a different conversation. And we didn't have any fireworks afterwards.

I think it was. I would say it was the kind of training and the kind of things that I've learned over the last several years through my school, through my friends, family, my professors those of those around me who have taught me the. Value of being adulting in the room. And if people are not behaving well, then that is unfortunate, but it's only up to us to determine what we can do as human beings to set the conversation straight.

Michael Lee: And you don't know whether you persuaded him or not. You just know that he was quiet. 

Sherman Tylawsky: That's my understanding. That's right. And I think if I had escalated whether my tone on that, I think it would not have helped. It certainly would not have changed his mind. And it was. Beneficial that what I've talked about the bene, the value of respecting others and ensuring people are not hurt.

Those things you just can't disagree on anyway. So I think he just [00:15:00] realized that the conversation turned to that and I, there was really no point further to disagree on,

Michael Lee: anybody who's ever been in a long-term relationship with a partner or a sibling or a parent knows that we can have endless vociferous disputes about the facts.

No, that's not what happened. No, you're interpretation. You're completely inventing something, and to both of us, both sides. It can feel like gaslighting, but there could also be really reasonable disagreements over. What happened and why? What happened. But there's also these species of arguments, and yours is one of those where somebody who literally witnessed something and lived through it is then confronting a kind of conspiratorial culture that is bred online where facts can be completely reinterpreted, denied, et cetera.

It reminds me a little bit. Of the story of the parents of the Sandy Hook victims being confronted by conspiracy theorists saying that it never happened or that the children didn't exist in the first place or had not died, and it was all government inspired [00:16:00] false flag operation. 

Sherman Tylawsky: I've learned, Mike, that when I tell people I would not want January research to happen to anybody or it happen at all, I think it changes the dynamic of a conversation.

In some ways a bit more positive way in the sense that I am trying to signal that I do not care for political violence. We should not care for political violence, and it's very important we keep a lot of these values and. Other aspects of our politic culture are very sacred. The, going back to when we disagree, there, there are so many places in this world where disagreement is illegal or it's non-existent.

Or even if there's, there are places in the world where you technically could disagree. How many people out there could really willing be able to want to disagree or challenge an idea? So I think the premise of disagreement is very sacred. However, [00:17:00] with all that it's so important that we maintain a humanity side and we remind each other.

Given in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, given the episodes of political violence we've seen in the last several years. It's even more important to recognize not just my story, but also try to encourage people to learn the different stories and the experiences of people on that day and hope that people can reflect on it and ensure that we don't, that we have good, smooth transitions of power, which is a key cornerstone of our democracy.

Michael Lee: As I hear you, he was offering three different interpretations of January 6th that rival yours and perhaps more, and these at least seem to be the three most prominent counter interpretations of what really happened. One was that it was a fun pep rally. That people [00:18:00] couldn't take a joke about.

Two was a full on false flag operation, planted Antifa, the whole thing. And three, that it was a legitimate protest that only some parts of it got a little bit out of control to, to back way up. What's at risk for you, if any, or all of those interpretations become more prominent?

Sherman Tylawsky: I think it would effectively 

not only change the way we see the event, I also think it would lead to a lot more. Excuses for breaking democratic norms, it would allow the 2028 election or 20 32, 20, 36, et cetera. It would allow those to be the contests that are not bought on the ballot box. But unfortunately, that fight spills into maybe potentially [00:19:00] fights at polling centers or fights at rallies, or people who are.

Just within their lives trying to silence one another because they feel that because one side is already claiming fraud in some way, shape, or form, I think it's the cascade of. Small to large norm breaking activities that could undermine faith and confidence within our system. I think it also could take away a lot of agency from people in terms of getting involved in politics.

One of, I was able to have a conversation with a staffer who was on the house four when January 6th happened, and one of the things we discussed in that episode was. The importance of inform people about elections, knowing, telling people that it's not run by just one little machine somewhere that run controls all the elections in all 50 states.

It's the value of getting people involved in actually working the polls. If people understood the procedures that occurred in their county and. [00:20:00] Seeing how ballots are secured, seeing how county clerks, my county clerk is a friend of mine and he gave me a couple opportunities to volunteer to help people register, vote.

It's all these activities, civic activities that could be at risk if we, if one or more of those theories were to be more prominent. I think with takeaway agency, it would also lead to more norm breaking activities that are. Too costly already for one instance. 

Michael Lee: This is a real kind of microcosm for an overall battle for democratic norms that you are waging.

Sherman Tylawsky: It's almost like the event, it's even January 6th, and also that encounter to, it makes my understanding of politics a bit more fragile. And what I mean by that is. We are often in class or at school. We, when we first learn about civic, we just see that it's [00:21:00] in the textbook, it's given, it's just there.

But when you go through some EL episode of political violence, I wouldn't. I would imagine that a lot of people's views of those norms, as you mentioned, Mike, those elements that we hold quite closely in our country, those start to feel more fragile and feels like there's somebody out there who might really want to truly want to take away from you.

And that's something that I've tried to reconcile with is just how do, when whenever the conversation comes up, there's always this question of how do I. How do we prevent a January 6th? That's been the big question. I'm still trying to answer almost five years on, and I still look back on that day and I kind of wonder perhaps for a number of reasons, is there purpose as to why in the, one of the darkest times in our country's history, why is it was it that I had to experience that?

And so I try to use that [00:22:00] as a lesson to try and get people to. Not only understand the event better, but to tell people, say Nick, to not feel, just as I was feeling at the time, I was feeling quite helpless. Everybody was feeling helpless at the time. How do we not feel helpless? How do we feel helpful in our civics?

That's the point I think to go back to the podcast when we disagree. How do we bring those ideals and values to when we disagree with others so that we can get to better. Better political environment and a better civic fabric than we found it before. 

Michael Lee: Sherman Ky, thank you so much for being on when we disagree.

Sherman Tylawsky: Thank you, Mike. Really appreciate the conversation 

Michael Lee: when We Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse k and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at When We [00:23:00] disagree@gmail.com.