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 accept anything that doesn’t reflect your favorite team in a positive 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?” Where is the civility when it comes to political discourse?

I ask this because I am concerned as to where this will lead, and where it has already led. I watch debates and discussions between our elected officials and candidates running for office and cringe with how bad the discourse has gotten. Debates have become shouting and screaming matches, name-calling festivals, and substance-less shitshows due to the crumbling of our political discourse.

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, or even consider the other side of an issue is next to impossible. PewResearch did a study on the partisan divide on political views and found that 44% of Democrats and 45% of Republicans had a very unfavorable opinion of the other party. In 1994, that number was fewer than 20% in each party.

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 Erika 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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