The closer that we get to this years presidential election, the more I notice how passionate people are about the candidate or position they support. Some people refuse to vote, some people want to write in for Bernie Sanders, and then of course there are those that support either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Now, I don't know if I was just too young to notice in any other presidential elections, but this year, it seems like supporters are generally very passionate about their opinions. Yes, I know that oftentimes people are passionate about their opinions, but this seems different.
In my opinion, I feel as though people are more aggressive than ever about who or what they support. While it's important that people form educated opinions and truly feel that their opinion, at least in this case, can better the country and all of our lives, I personally have begun to shy away from talking about politics with anyone for fear of aggressive backlash.
When people have differences of opinion, it is one thing to debate about said opinion, that is use facts and evidence to back their claim. I know that there is still bias as each person has their own values and moral and believes certain things to be more important than others, however fact is still the most important aspect of any argument or even discussion.
This year, whenever I hear people arguing over who should become the next president of the United States, it seems that conjecture plays a larger role in the argument than facts do. On one hand, I feel a certain pride that the people of our country are so passionate about improving it, but on the other hand I am worried about how they are deciding the best person to do that.
Basically, I just wanted to write this article to say that when talking about politics, I think we all could go about it in a way that is more constructive than aggressive. When speaking about this election specifically, we should try to use facts more than speculation and even more importantly, we have to be sure not to twist the words of the candidate, which the media does for us often enough.
One issue I've noticed in arguments is how it seems as though people will make up "facts" that they believe to be true either because of how the media portrayed the situation or because of their own personal spin they put on it. This is an incredibly important election and so we must all be sure to be as educated as possible when making a decision and find information from various outlets to try and curb bias as much as possible. Most importantly, is to please debate using facts and not half-truths or opinions or out and out lies.
As frustrating as politics can be, they are important in our society. While it's great that we have different opinions, we should try to be as educated as possible in forming those opinions and sharing them with others so we don't let politics tear us apart when they're meant to help us work amicably together.
