Political discussions are something that people try to stay clear of at all costs. Whether it is having a discussion with your uncle at Thanksgiving, that one friend from back home on Facebook or even that lady who does your nails; we all hate talking politics.
However, the inability to have these conversations is becoming a part of our everyday lives. Sadly, this is hurting our political society.
Last week, Marco Rubio gave a speech about the civility of political discussions in front of the Senate after Elizabeth Warren’s speaking time was halted. This is a speech we can all learn something from, but unfortunately, nobody really paid any attention.
“We are becoming a society incapable of having debate anymore,” said Rubio, and sadly this is true.
From my experiences on campus, and elsewhere, we are becoming a society that cannot seem to disagree.
Many times when having political discussions with classmates, friends and even family people dismiss ideas that they disagree with as completely wrong or use degrading terms in response.
This is having a long term effect on our political discussions as a society.
We cannot seem to respectfully disagree with others and respect others as people. We take our disagreements and portray our disagreement as hate or anger.
“We are reaching a point in this republic where we are not going to be able to solve the simplest of issues because everyone is putting themselves in a corner where everyone hates everybody,” Rubio said.
This is not exclusive to one specific party. We have Democrats who generalize all ideas of the Republicans as simply racist or fascist, while Republicans generalize all Democrats as socialists who want all things to be free.
These generalizations and stereotypes of our political parties affect the way we can discuss ideas.
In one of my classes this week, my professor discussed that many of her students were afraid to talk about their political beliefs on campus.
This was either due to the fact that the students were generally conservative and were afraid to share their differing opinions with the predominately liberal student body or that liberal students were afraid to even slightly agree with the Trump administration.
Is this where we want our society to be? If not, we have to get over this concept that our own ideas are the only correct ones and that we can only associate with people who share the same beliefs.
Yes, you may disagree with someone about a piece of legislation or a social issue, but what people do not realize is that Americans can agree on a lot politically. Contrary to popular belief Americans are very close ideologically. We tend to take our differences and blow them way out of proportion.
