Daniel's Directory

I think every American is guilty of something that, at some levels, seems very innocent. When you have a favorite sports team, it can be hard to see anything that doesn’t reflect your favorite team in a negative light. When you have a favorite band, you are more likely to dismiss negative reviews or negative feelings about their songs and albums. If you have a favorite movie, anybody’s negative opinion of that movie is automatically discounted.

These examples are all innocent enough that you may have gotten a chuckle out of reading that because you realize that you do one of the things I listed above.

However, I am noticing a trend similar to this that is a danger to our discourse and something that is very troubling. Political tribalism is something that I have noticed becoming very prevalent in today’s society. I scroll sites like Twitter and Facebook on a regular basis and see statements like, “If you support Donald Trump you must be a racist and a sexist.” Similarly, if you support Joe Biden you want all babies to die, you want my taxes to go up by 500%, and issues like this. These statements have me asking, “What happened to working together or seeing the other side?”

I ask this knowing that the vast majority of people in this country do not exist on social media and do not reliably post their opinions on social media. That said, I think this is a still a troubling trend to be watching on social media.

The cause of this isn’t down to one concrete thing, but I think that the main driving force behind polarization on social media is partisanship in our politics. Politics today have become so far apart that getting any person to vote down the middle is next to impossible. Votes routinely go down party lines so much that you can predict the voting result before deliberations have even been started.

How does this polarization and partisanship impact the public? How does it impact millennials and Generation Z? I’ve seen this have a negative impact on the people that participate in our voting process. My wife, Erika, is participating in her first Presidential election of her lifetime and, right now, she has no interest in voting for either candidate due to the polarization and partisanship she’s seen.

“The way I see it, Republicans and Democrats are on two opposite sides of the coin, and, frankly, I don’t want any part of the coin,” said Ver Steeg with a laugh.

This does reflect the feeling of many people, and it could be a major impact in our political election system in the future. Nobody wants any part of the coin if the two sides are not willing to come together and be united to make the country a better place for all to live.

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