Ladies and gentlemen may I have your attention, please. On the agenda for the day is a talk about politics, not Trump lovers vs. Trump haters, just politics. It is becoming increasingly uncommon for us as a society to talk about things that we know are going to start a disagreement. We are all perfectly fine talking about it safely behind the screens of our computers but when it comes to talking about it with people in person, forget about it.
We never want to say things to other people that might offend them, and we stay away from hot topics and discussions because it “makes things uncomfortable.” Over the last couple of months, I have shied away from saying what I believe in and sticking up for my political beliefs in fear of getting shut down, told I am stupid and ignorant, and so on and so forth. Today, I am done with that.
I have spent too many days developing my beliefs and listening to the opposite side to sit back and watch everything our founders worked for go to waste. Did you know that even they didn’t agree on everything at the same time? It took them TEN MONTHS to ratify our Constitution and even longer to get it to something that they were willing to get ratified.
Our nation is built on diversity, not adversity. The United States of America started out as a place of freedom from the tyranny of England and Spain and Portugal and all of those countries. We all come from immigrants. We all have taken what doesn’t belong to us. We all are products of broken laws and disagreements, but we all are human.
To be honest, I don’t like Trump, but he is my president whether I want him to be or not. I don’t agree with what he has to say 99% of the time, but in the end, he is the man leading my country. Wishing for him fail is wishing for us all to fail. Wanting to see him fall is wanting to see our America in shambles.
This year I was lucky enough to have an American Government class that was able to shed some light on this election for me. It gave me more knowledge about things than I knew possible. I spent hours with a professor who wasn’t afraid to stand up for what she believed in but never once pushed in down our throats and said, “you better believe this, or you won’t pass my class,” she was never once a person I was afraid to say my opinion to when it differed from hers. She created an environment that was conducive to learning about politics and our nation by taking away the cruelty that the world surrounds politics with.
As a society, we are afraid to talk about this presidency, or any presidency really, because we know people don’t see things the same way we do. What’s an opinion when you can’t share it? A secret never to be heard. A couple of weeks ago I was talking with some friends who had some of the same views I did when somebody said, “can we please stop talking about this? It makes me want to vomit and crawl out of my skin.” What are we doing America? The one thing we need to talk about, we won’t.
As a collective group, we need to figure a lot of things out. It doesn’t need to be Republicans against Democrats, blacks against whites, homophobes against the LGBTQ community; hell it doesn’t need to be anybody against anybody, it needs to be a group effort. WE THE PEOPLE need to come together to see the change that we want. WE THE PEOPLE need to agree to disagree. WE THE PEOPLE need to talk about what is going on instead of shying away from touchy subjects. Most of all, WE THE PEOPLE need to learn to become the people again. We need to learn how to be the place where everybody dreams of coming instead of the place where people dream of fleeing. We need to face our issues head on but learn to do so in a way that doesn’t belittle the other party involved. In our heads, we may all be right, but to the world, we may all be wrong.