The plague of political division

Posted October 2020

By Tristan Hansen

Staff Editor

Although America’s Covid19 pandemic may still be raging, it’s clear that we have yet another disease on our hands. It may lack the ability to directly wipe out hundreds of thousands of people, but it has the capacity to tear apart families and instigate chaos and disorder nonetheless. I am, of course, talking about the plague of political division.

On Tuesday evening, I was sitting at the dinner table, enjoying a nice meal with my family, when the conversation eventually turned towards politics. One of my family members (who shall remain unnamed) proceeded to go on a tangent about, well, the talking points that have become far too common in our current political environment.

“The other side is the embodiment of pure evil, and if you vote for them, you’ll have to live with the consequences! A vote for any other candidate is a vote for him!” he said.

When I tried to express my concerns with his side, I was met with hostility and passive aggressive aggressiveness. When I suggested that the other side was not in fact evil, and actually made some very good points on occasion, I was met with many of the same recycled refrains that are commonly used to justify abject, blind hatred of the other side. And when I went on to claim that this type of hateful, nasty, divisive rhetoric serves as the enemy of a healthy and functional democratic society, he stormed downstairs and didn't return until the next morning.

This anecdote, I believe, serves as a perfect microcosm for what I understand to be one of the most prominent issues within our current political landscape, that being the nastiness, anger, and division that far too often features in our partisan politics. As I understand it, this is a fairly recent phenomenon. Not to say that politics has never been a divisive subject (the rule that politics will divide is as old as politics itself), but rather that recent events have served to make the issue many times worse. Both parties have drifted further apart, one of the most divisive presidents in recent history was elected, and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic and BLM-related demonstrations have exacerbated pre-existing tensions between both sides.

It seems easy within this current political environment of ours to declare the other side “socialist gun-grabbers who enjoy killing babies” or “members of a fascist death cult with no regard for American democracy,” depending on your stance. But by making these assumptions, by instinctively placing people into such categories without first letting them speak and have a fair say, we, in essence, abandon the civil discourse that is necessary within any healthy democratic society. Instead of respectfully exchanging ideas to reach a consensus and advance society forwards, we sew disunity and create divisions with others, be they people on the internet, classmates, coworkers, or even close friends and family. Ultimately, we destabilize our relationships, grow further apart, and become more resentful of each other.

With institutional distrust at an all time high, rule of law genuinely breaking down in some regions of the country, and Covid19 continuing to infect and kill left right and center, we need, more than ever, to come together as a united country, joined in our desire to meaningfully address these problems and promote our collective interests. Let’s not, any longer, view those with views different from ours as evil people with an evil agenda, but instead as normal people who happen to have come to a different consensus than us. Instead of engaging with others through hateful, recycled rhetoric, let’s instead discuss our views like rational, civil adults who want this country to become better. Because at the moment, politics is little more than a team sport for most people. And when politics is treated as a team sport, nobody wins and America loses.