This article begins with a story.
Today I was walking past a table on my college campus’s plaza that was advocating for one of the presidential candidates that is running in the 2016 election. There was a guy standing there giving his quick run down of this candidate’s platform to some onlookers and I stopped to listen. After he finished speaking, I turned to continue my walk to class but he stopped me. He asked if I had any questions for him, to which I politely answered that I didn’t, thanked him for his time, and turned away again. That’s when he said, in the most contemptuous voice, “Oh you must be a member of the ________ party then” and turned away from me laughing.Oh, I'm sorry, when exactly did my political affiliation influence my ability to listen to opinions that may or may not (and how would this random person have any idea what I believe?) align with mine? I am an open-minded college student in the 21st century with a borderline obsessive love of history and politics and I will not stand there and be branded by a contemptuous stranger with a party label simply because I didn’t currently have questions and don’t want to sign onto your candidates bandwagon on my walk to class on a Friday morning.
Now this isn’t just supposed to be a rant about presumptuous people who need to learn about polite communication. This is just one example of how much our society squishes us into little boxes based on something as basic as our political affiliation.
Even our Facebook profile has a place to announce our political affiliation to the world. There’s a huge spectrum of political membership even within a single party (see below).
So although politics do govern the world we live in, why do we feel the need to throw people into one group or the other and stick labels on what they must believe as members of that group?
For example, here are some I’ve heard recently:
If you’re a woman, how can you possibly be a Republican?
Are you a hippie? Is that why you’re a Democrat?
So if you’re a Republican you must support Trump, right?
So if you’re a Democrat you must not support the military, right?
When we meet people, we don’t ask their name and political affiliation--we ask about who they are as a person. In school, professors aren’t supposed to tell students which party they are a member of because education comes first, not a certain professor’s political opinion. In the end, whether we are an Independent, Democrat, Republican, or whatever in-between, we want what is best for the country and for the world. Sure, maybe we have different views on how to get there but we shouldn’t be out to get each other. We need to work together and stop telling people what they must believe because of the political party they vote for. We are humans with thoughts and ideas and, although this may come as a shock, we actually have differing opinions on things.
We have free speech in this country so that we can express our thoughts and opinions, but when did we all decide to stop using that speech to work together and instead use it to attack and belittle each other based on assumptions perpetuated by a society that claims to be so open minded yet it is turning us against each other? We are better than this.
Maybe if we stopped trying to put people into categories and spent more time working together, out government would get a lot more done.
