Opinion: Cruising toward a lost civility

PRINCE RUPERT, Canada – America, you could use a cruise.

This thought comes to me as I sit with my family talking lazily over seafood chowder and pizza on the restaurant deck overlooking a pretty harbor here. Bald eagles fish between the sailboats and fishing boats moored below us. Our gleaming white cruise ship, the Seven Seas Mariner, is docked a five-minute walk away.

Pity the poor server. She looks exhausted as my older brother, my sister, two nephews, their lovely girlfriends and my also lovely wife crowd around the wooden table as only a family can. My oldest brother, who would have made the laughter quotient nearly unbearable, couldn’t make the trip because of an illness at home.

My side of our family lives hundreds of miles away – spread across Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. We rarely spend much time together – especially since our parents died a few years back. Much pulls us apart – distance, life’s circumstances, illness; nevertheless, the bond of family is strong and mysterious.

Yet, if you followed this same group on social media, you wouldn’t recognize us. Online, we kinda hate each other. One or two of us have blocked one another on Facebook after many long and bitter exchanges over politics. We are Nazis or Libtards. Some loathe Donald Trump; some believe he is making America great again. Sound familiar?

Before this voyage, things became so nasty that we had to either declare a truce or ruin this trip. My sister had given us this cruise as a gift to bring us close, so it would have been unthinkably crummy to wreck it by bickering.

We pledged to avoid all politics during the duration of the 11-day cruise. It wasn’t unlike bar drunks agreeing to abstain just a few days just to prove they can.

I deleted the Facebook app some time ago after it became clear to me that it had morphed into a place where people scream at each other without the mellowing restraint of eye contact. The day before we departed, I also deleted Twitter, which isn’t much better. However, I kept Instagram because my feed has not yet been tainted by political rage. And I still want to make my friends jealous with all the photos of us doing really cool stuff.

Sadly, the TV in our cabin offers cable news channels, but I vowed not to watch any of them for one second. So far so good.

Going cold turkey wasn’t easy. Early on, I looked longingly at the TV remote, wanting just a peek at the news. Every few minutes I reached for my phone to see what fresh outrage had gripped the country. But I resisted and instead found a kind of informed serenity in newspaper sites, especially the AJC. No panels of “experts” shouting their talking points. No biased anchors pompously tailoring the news to a partisan audience. No irritating declaration of breaking news a gazillion times per hour.

Additionally, the ship’s staff delivers the news every evening via a straightforward, four-page summary of the big stories. Its blandness is therapeutic.

By day two, I could feel the cleansing begin. We hiked through the woods, marveling at the temperate rain forests’ plants and animals. We admired mountains, valleys and glaciers. (No commenting on the melting!) I could feel nature’s healing powers. The excursions were all with fellow passengers, and we took in these sites and sounds together, creating a communal store of happy memories. Soon, we knew our fellow travelers by their first names and hometowns. My wife has invited several hundred former strangers to visit us on St. Simons Island.

This is the first cruise for my wife and me. Cruises never seemed our thing. We like to wander on our own and forge an adventure together or with our kids when we travel. But, you know, this cruise thing is growing on me. You never see a check in the restaurants. The drinks in the bar are free. Nice people come twice a day to freshen our suite. You can veg in the spa, hit the casino or hear the song stylings of the various resident performers doing everything from Bach to the Beatles.

Everything is easy listening – nothing is deep, dark or edgy. Even so, it satisfies in its own, vanilla way. It is salve. My brain is resting like an offseason NFL player.

And everyone is so civil – in the way the world used to be. With the other 700 passengers, you form a polite, cheerful society. We wear nice clothes to dinner.

You say, “Good morning,” and “Good evening.” You strike up conversations about seeing seals and bears or otters. You talk about your hometowns, your kids or what you do or did for a living. Never politics. That would violate the unspoken rule that enforces a kind of herd civility. It brings substance to the cliché that more unites us than divides us. (For the record, there is this one guy who wears a cap screaming his political beliefs. I’m looking into the possibility of asking the captain to keelhaul him.)

Lacking the easy fresh meat of politics, our family discussions revolve around these topics: Our kids, our lives (marriages, new grandchildren, etc.), embarrassing childhood stories, casino winnings and losses, the good and bad of our parents, dinner, lunch, breakfast buffets and, of course, the nightly dessert selection. One night, we discussed the merits of the various iterations of soufflés at some length.

Nevertheless, political sharks still encircle us. During the Fourth of July parade in Juneau, a few participants carried explicitly political messages on their signs. My brother and I photographed these marchers with strikingly different levels of enthusiasm. Yet, we did not speak a word.

And one night we launched the topic of removing or keeping Civil War monuments – a former subject of a Facebook tirade – but pulled it back before it escalated. By dessert, we were debating the merits of cheese plate versus soufflé.

I know, I know. Not everyone can afford a family cruise. (Thanks, again, Sis!) But everyone can afford to take a step back for a view days. Pull away from Facebook and Twitter. You will begin to recall the sweetness of real life and the people who live in it. Turn off cable news. It is mudwrestling not journalism. Read a newspaper, for Pete’s sake. You will feel better soon. Trust me.

In time, you will again talk about life, memories, great vacations and the stupid stuff you did with your brothers and sisters when you were kids. Do this for two weeks. If you’re lucky, you will remember what it was to be human.

This cruise isn’t over. We have a few more days of suppressing our rants. At any moment, someone might light a match by mentioning the Supreme Court, immigration, Scott Pruitt or the other fresh outrages steering the news cycle.

But maybe we’ve all been changed just enough. Maybe the dinner table will continue to be dominated by stories of the incredibly dumb things I did when I was a kid (ask me about setting my sister’s mattress on fire) or my nephew’s inexplicable fondness for Long Island tea or my brother’s anguish over whether to eat one more rack of lamb. Maybe my sister will reveal even more very awkward stories of what life was like with my parents before I was born.

And then there’s always the divisive topic of soufflé versus cheese for desert. On this, we may never agree.