This person has a different opinion than me on issue X, therefore they must be a bad person. Instead, it seems easier to attribute malicious motives to those we disagree with. Shouldn’t we seek to understand and engage with people we disagree with? Wouldn’t that be more constructive? I fear this is the sort of the path that many are regretfully taking us down. Should we petition large corporations, politicians, and newspapers to silence those we disagree with? Should we call them names or engage in violence in the streets with people we disagree with? This begs the question, what are we to do with those people that we disagree with? Should we move to central Alabama or head northeast to Greenwich Village or to the far west coast of Malibu and only congregate with like-minded people? But an earnest and open exchange of ideas. Not the trite “honest dialogue” that you hear the hack political pundits plea for on cable news networks. Instead, we should sit down and have a conversation. I think the former heavily outweighs the latter, so we should stop attributing negative motivations to people’s political opinions. Other people have bad motivations, ignore information, and can simply be dismissed as ill-intentioned individuals. Some people come from different backgrounds, hold different values, and see things differently. I think a lot of people need to come to a sobering realization and accept this as a statistical fact. Left or right, moderate or extreme, the reality is that not everyone is going to agree with you. No matter what side of the political aisle you fall on, guess what? At least 49% of the country probably disagrees with you. In a country where there were once enough shared values to handle opposing views and debate was encouraged, I fear that the civil society has withered away and there is not enough commonality remaining for compromise anymore. Both sides blow their proverbial whistles and charge each other’s trench in a futile effort to win the political day.ĭiscourse in this country has digressed into name-calling and tribalism with politics being centered around demonization of your perceived opposition.
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