Before any candidate even had a clear lead in the election – before votes even started to be counted – I realized I’m scared for what the future of our country holds. I’m scared for how our generation will grow up. I’m scared to see if our country will become more unified, or even more divided.
For the entirety of the week of the election, my social media feeds were flooded with all things politics. And why wouldn’t they be? This election was dubbed “the most important election of all time” – just like every other election for the past several years.
It wasn’t the fact that people were posting about politics that concerns me. As Americans, it’s one of the most basic rights to have free speech. No, the thing that concerned me most, and still concerns me greatly now is the complete and utter lack of tolerance for those who have different views and beliefs than someone else.
I’m not talking about racism or abortion rights or any social issue. If someone was being blatantly racist, that should not be tolerated at all. I’m talking about the political parties we align most with. Keyword being “most.”
Just because someone considers herself a Democrat, doesn’t mean she loves everything about Joe Biden. A Republican woman can still be pro-choice and not a fan of Trump. The figureheads of each party do not necessarily have the same views as everyone else in the party. That’s the thing that I don’t like about our two-party system; the world is not black and white and our politics should not be either.
There is a middle ground between the two parties. It is a spectrum. The extremes on either side are the ones who seem to get the most attention and that, in turn, ends up being who the party is associated with. But it is extremely unrealistic to assume that all Democrats have exactly the same views and all Republicans have exactly the same views. What I’m trying to say is that we need to normalize being in the middle. People can agree with both parties on different issues. (Again, these issues don’t include things that take away freedoms from other people – there is no argument to be had when it comes to human rights).
I saw so many posts saying, “If you voted for so-and-so, we can’t be friends.” I’m here to tell you that this is a myth. I happen to have friendships with multiple people who voted differently than me and have things we may disagree on. That is the beauty of our country, of having the freedom to have our own opinions.
There are so many different opinions, stories, cultures, and people in this country. We can sit around and preach about uniting and fixing America all we want. President-Elect Biden can do everything in his power to try to unite us, but it really comes down to us. As Biden himself said in his speech on November 7th, “To make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as our enemies. They are not our enemies. They are Americans.” There’s so much left for us to do to continue on the path to healing. We need to be respectful and loving. That is what will unite us. We need to be the generation that is willing to sit down and have a respectful conversation with someone who thinks differently than us. Educate them and let them educate us. We can be different and still get along. It makes us better citizens. It makes us better humans.
