America, imagine your perfect president.
I don't want you thinking about any former president or even the ones that ran this last fall. No names will be given, just traits. Most people want them to be a good leader, of course. Others want someone who's for the people and not for themselves. We all want someone who we can trust, someone to represent our country on how we want to be seen. We all have great ideas on who our president should be, so what makes it so difficult for us to chose who we want? The answer is ourselves.

Since the beginning of America political parties have been in place. It started out with Alexander Hamilton leading the Federalists and Thomas Jefferson leading the Democratic Republicans. To narrow down what each party stood for, the federalist believed in a strong central government, the Democratic Republicans were more for smaller state governments. After Washington stepped down from the presidency a Federalist- John Adams took his place followed by Democratic Republican Thomas Jefferson, then James Madison. Soon after-during the war of 1812 the Federalist Party collapsed.

The parties kept changing from there. The Democrats came into view as Andrew Jackson became president in 1820 and the Republican Party a little more than 3 decades later in 1854. The political parties though have changed drastically since then. "Conservatives" were the Democratic Party and what people consider "liberals" would have been the Republican Party. This all changed right around the year of 1964 when the civil rights movement was happening bringing us into more modern politics.

To put this into perspective, opposing parties never got along. It wasn't until the last election things have started getting out of hand.

Our candidates this last year were none other than Donald Trump (R) and Hillary Clinton (D). In multiple polls, it had shown that these two candidates are two of the most hated candidates in United States history. So how did we end up there? Americans voted they wanted these two, so why did we hate them so much?

First off, not all Americans voted. Studies have shown that in the primaries as little as 40% of the eligible voters actually voted, and less than 60% voted in the election November 2016. In the primaries though, the election that chose which of the few candidates you wanted to support your party, not even half of the voters in America actually voted. How do we dare call ourselves anything close to a democracy when more than half of the United States refused to place their ballot? Who do we blame? Our parents or teachers for not teaching us what it means to vote when they've been pounding it into our heads since the day we could spell the word "vote"? Or is it possible the political parties fault? It's none of those actually, it's all our fault.

We ignored our right to vote and we are facing the biggest consequences we've ever had to face. Two candidates that no one wants.
They were two people we did not want to be known by for the next four years. They are such polar opposites with no in between that people are split. They are making our political parties into jokes.

Politics is all about meeting at the middle ground if you want to get something done (which is why really gets done in Congress). This obviously is something democrats and republicans are really bad at doing. If you look at any political post on Facebook or any other social media platform you will see that they are putting a clear line on what each party is.
Democrats are pro choice making them murders

Republicans are all gun crazy hicks

Democrats are all sensitive millennial

Republicans are all racist

People throw around the words "conservatives" and liberals (libs) like it's an insult.

The list just keeps going on and on. Overall all these are not true.

There are Republicans who believe America needs stronger gun laws, there are Democrats who believe we need more border control, and there are both Republican and Democratic millennials. These are the people the politicians chose not to acknowledge, and because of this, a lot of the millennials and more moderate voters chose not to vote.

This right here is the reason we now have one of the most unpopular presidents amongst polls in United States hIstory. This is why our allies think we are insane and our enemies aren't afraid of us. This right here is what is tearing our country apart. Our stupidity is what got us in this position. Our determination to watch the other political party fail is what is destroying us as a country.

Aren't we supposed to stand together?

Our brothers, sisters, children, teachers- they all stand together for the pledge allegiance daily, our country stood together as terrorist attacked our home fifteen years ago. So how can such little things like who it is to blame make some of us sit back down?

How do we sit around and let the rich take over the country? Or let the bad cops wear the badge while the good ones get theirs taken away? Where did our country's morals gone?

This is why it's so important to vote. WE have the power to stop this. We were given the freedom to change everything by just marking a line on a ballot. So let the 2016 election be a lesson for everyone. You have a choice. You get to chose who would be your "perfect president" but that's only if you vote. No one has the right to bitch about politics if they don't put their voice into it. Hopefully the country will learn as a whole we are stronger if we stand together. Today, sadly, is not that day.