We don't need any more opinions about this election.
We don't need any more reasons why Trump will be America's destruction or its saving grace.
We don't need any more wildly biased media reports.
We don't need any more.
We are tired.
America, land of the free? More like the land where people riot to protest the denial of their political preferences...
The land where people are beginning to actually be afraid of the opposing party, disregarding whether the danger is real.
The land that thrives off stereotyping on a massive scale.
Since when has a person's political ideology rendered the whole of their character, of their lives, before your all-seeing, all knowing, wise, critical judgement?
I am not trying to be offensive. I am pointing out the flaw of the American Stereotype.
The media thrives off stereotyping. White, southern, republican racists. Ethnic, college-age, LGBTQ-supportive liberals. Pro-choice feminists. Hate-crazy Evangelicals. College kids whose brains are melting under their Xbox or PlayStation. Older folks who are still struggling to assimilate the technology of the 21st Century.
It's all here. It's all been done before. And most of it is wrong.
Though most of Americans can likely fit into one of these descriptions, not one American is really like the other. We are vastly different even from others in our own political party, and it is downright unethical to brand someone with all the perceived corresponding traits of that party.
Your cousins who voted for Hillary? They are kind, normal, well-meaning individuals with jobs in all sorts of industries looking to advance the rights of women and LGBTQ persons. They're not crazy, agenda-pushing liberals.
Your brother who voted for Trump? He is an educated, sensible, clear-minded young man not prejudiced by hatred for ethnic groups, wanting to course-correct the nation to its stable government roots. He's not an angry white racist.
Extreme political divide is aggravated by the propogation of stereotypes. These dehumanizing people by labeling them and thus discrediting their arguments. It's a logical fallacy: the "Ad Hominem" (Against the Man) fallacy.
By sticking a label on someone, you imply that they are biased and incapable of providing good reasoning. It's logically illegal, yet we see it everywhere.
This is why everything and everyone is nitty-gritty-all-over each other like never before. Sure, its politics, and there are always differences of opinion, but those differences are never supposed to divide. They are supposed to make the whole stronger.
The only way to defeat the division is to choose to live above the stereotypes.
Let's decide to be a steady ship in a rocky generation. Let's choose to do better than we did yesterday. Let's show kindness to people we don't like.
Let's do what's hard; what makes us uncomfortable; what makes us afraid.
Let's be daring enough to be humble, and see the quiet dignity of real, free America rise again.
