Many of my friends on Facebook have been saying that they feel like they have woken up in an America they don’t recognize. I think this concept needs to be addressed.

I want to start with an anecdote, that may seem totally unrelated. When I was in middle school in Chicago, Chicago had one of the coldest winters in a century. Many kids in my class would go around saying “how can there be global warming if we’re having the coldest winter ever??”

We have a tendency, as a species, to put ourselves at the center of the world. What is true for us must be true for others. Even though the world is huge and my area of the midwest was only a tiny percentage of it, those kids couldn’t comprehend that what was happening where they were wasn’t also true elsewhere. Even though the world in 2007 was remarkably hot, since we had a cold winter the kids couldn’t comprehend that.

Now let’s take this same idea to politics. Before Chicago, I lived in Berkeley, California. Berkeley is (or at least was, it’s changed some recently) one of the most progressive places on the planet. My parents were both Democrats and everyone in my family that I knew for my first 18 years of life was a college-educated liberal. All of my friends came from similar households. All of my teachers were progressive, even having the kids call them by their first name at my private elementary school.

Everyone that I knew for the first 11 years of my life had a remarkably similar viewpoint to myself. This isn’t just true for places like Berkeley, though. Across the country, from gerrymandering and a general desire to be with people who think like you do, areas are becoming far more homogeneous in terms of political views.While my suburb of Chicago was a little more diverse, it was only so on fiscal issues. Almost everyone was socially liberal (pro-gay marriage, pro-choice, etc). And those who weren’t I easily avoided.

Also, the way that we get news and what we trust as a fact source varies for a similar reason. Especially for the younger generation like I’m a part of, we get as much or more of our news from social media shares as we do from televised news channels. Which sources were shared on my social media feed? Liberal, through and through. Sites that are as biased and non-reputable as my friends and family would say of Rush Limbaugh on the right were a huge influence on me and continue to influence my friends as I see them share them to this day. Fox news was never on in my household. To me, the only person that watched it was an uneducated hick or an old, greedy, bigoted white man. Having talked to numerous liberal friends, they have a similar regard for the network that is now the most watched news channel in the country. And from significant anecdotal evidence, I gather the same is true of the conservatives bashing the “left-wing media”.

So how did America flip? How is it possible a man everyone you talk to except maybe “that one racist uncle” or “that meninist guy at school” hates him with a passion?

Well, because you grew up in, and continue to live in a bubble. Even if you had ended up coming to your current viewpoints, if you had grown up in a different environment in which you were “that feminist” or “that hippie liberal” you wouldn’t be so surprised that the other candidate was elected.

America is a gigantic country, both geographically and in terms of the political spectrum. And whether you think you are “woke” or “critically thinking," your upbringing and environment has undoubtedly had a huge impact on the way you think and what politics you regard as normal. It also would likely change what issues you regard as the most important. Oh, and it also affects what you regard as “racist," as “sexist," and as “bigoted."

So if you’re confused how we got here. How America was “tricked into voting for Hitler” or whatever you want to call it. Remember that your community is a small part of a big country. What has been normal for you may not be normal for the country at large.

I’m not saying not to be afraid. I’m not saying everything will be ok, or that we shouldn’t try and convince others to believe in our causes. I am truly afraid, not for myself, but for my LGBTQ+ friends. I am afraid because the suicide hotline was literally busy on election night. I am afraid because the progress we’ve made toward allowing people to worship or not worship any God they chose, toward allowing people to love who they want and have the same rights under the law as any other person, and the right to be whoever we want to be could be undone. I am afraid because women might die because they might lose access to safe reproductive services. I am afraid because children in elementary schools went home sick from being bullied for being an undocumented immigrant (or looking latina) the day after the election.

I am, like many, waking up in an America I don’t recognize. But that is because I didn’t grow up in America. No one did. The culture in a rural town in Oklahoma is as different from Berkeley, California as England is from Poland. America doesn’t have a homogeneous culture. The many social communities that make up the quilt that America is, vote with their interests and beliefs in mind and we come to a consensus. That’s how the country works. That’s how it has always worked. Whether the system needs to change or not is a topic for another article, but if we’re going to work with the system we have, it’s time to talk to people who disagree with us. Present statistics and support your arguments with facts. Not everyone will believe you, but no one will care if you just spew insults and labels on behavior that they have always regarded as normal and culturally appropriate.

I just hope partisanship can subside so we can once again talk with people from different cultures from our own so that real change can occur. It is only through a respectful dialogue with people of opposing viewpoints that we can start to fight the rigidity and certainty so prevalent in today’s society.