a house divided, blog post 21- annie deitz

Right now, somewhere in the universe, a small, relatively unimportant country (in the universal scheme of things) is beginning to turn on itself. Citizens are beginning to despise their neighbors. Families are being torn apart. Protests are being led, fights are breaking out, and people are terrifying others.

Why?

Political affiliations.

The upcoming 2016 American Presidential Election plays host to a wide variety of candidates. Whether it be a Cuban American republican, or an affluent conservative white man, or a female liberal, or a democratic socialist Jew; this election seems to be comprised of the diversity expected from an America melting pot.

Yet, like usual, we fail to recognize a good thing when we see it.

Rather than celebrating our various beliefs and differences, we attack those holding opinions different from our own. Rather than listening to others ideas and incorporating them into our own, we disregard anything that contradicts our own thoughts. Rather than using conflicting stances to widen our global outlook, we remain close minded and ignorant. Rather than acknowledging the fact that varying political preferences is a beneficial effect of our development as a culture that in turn helps promote a positive and productive society, we strip people who maintain differing opinions of intelligence and even basic aspects of humanity, restraining them (in our own minds) to the bottom of the bottom, where their voices remain unheard.

Everyone, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum, has thought on at least one occasion, "this political idea is completely ludicrous and holds no actual substance." Then, without addressing counterarguments or listening to any opposing evidence, you decide that whoever supports that idea or claims that political party is an idiot. Uneducated. Completely ignorant to what's really going on in America today.

This happens to everyone.

Conservatives are stereotyped as wealthy men who could care less about the plights of the middle/low class. They were born into an affluent family and are completely unaware of things going on around them. They are bigots, idiots, and should not be trusted.

Liberals are stereotyped as poor young adults who hang out in coffee bars wearing their beanies and converses while complaining about the elite 1% and asking for handouts from the government. Freshly out of school, they have no idea how their radical and impractical ideas will negatively affect the nation. They are loafers, idiots, and should not be trusted.

Despite our flaws, America is a pretty cool place. But it won't remain a cool place if we try to attack our neighbors in order to place our own political platforms on pedestals. This is actually sort of what happened during the Civil War- Americans were so politically biased against each other that they tried to dissolve the things uniting them together, the things that make America a pretty cool place. Rather than focusing on and exploiting our differences, we should instead work together to create a safe environment that allows for healthy political competition- something that would actually end up being beneficial to American government.  Lincoln famously stated once, "a house divided cannot stand." Our political diversity has proven that we can stand even through division, but maybe we could fly if those divisions stopped being so hostile.