I normally try so hard to be an open minded person. It is the one thing I can proudly pride myself on and know is a unique trait to me, Lizzy. Part of it stems from having a best friend who has opposing politics to me. It is no longer conducive for me to dehumanize every Republican when she is one. We are so similar on so many levels, that saying Republicans are idiots almost seems to be calling myself an idiot. So I try to put myself in their mindset, understanding why they believe in pro life, where their opposition to gay marriage comes from, their belief on no gun control, etc.

I’ve willingly stretched my beliefs and mind to empathize with incredibly different principles and standards than my own. At this point, I really did not think there was anything she could have said that I would not be able to work my perspective around, until she said her family was voting Trump. I was so surprised I felt myself go numb. Trump? Trump! Now, I did not really expect them to vote for Hillary. I thought they would vote Libertarian, maybe even write in their own candidate. I would have understood that, but Trump?

So, I tried again to open my mind, well Trump is (insert a long sound of cricket chirps). OK, I can’t come up with anything on my own, maybe his website will have something. I decided to look at his official campaign website and let my mind be fully submersed in the Trump propaganda. I tried to figure out why his open cruelty and ignorance would somehow appeal to extremely well educated humans like my uncle and aunt.

I literally could not get through five sentences without banging my head against the wall.

No. No. No. How could my family support someone who is so blatantly racist, who writes about Mexicans paying for their own physical wall, who spews crap and makes up his own “facts.” You cannot just make up your own fact, you dumbo. They're called facts for a reason!

For once, I cannot see the other side and it scares me. It feels as if my family is immoral. I know what’s right is subjective, but some matters are so unsettling in the stomach, any person with common sense can decipher right versus wrong.

Ruling the other side off as crazy is so much easier and more comfortable. It means you’re sane and they’re not. Dehumanizing opposing beliefs helps us avoid the even more unsettling possibility that if you, too, were brought up under a certain environment, you would vote for Trump -- maybe even a Hitler or a Stalin. So are you any different than that person who believes in the opposite that you do?

To align oneself with a party is not simply a political statement; it is a public proclamation on a set of morals. To most people, openly switching your political alignment seems like a bigger threat than potentially casting your vote to the next Hitler. It is easier for you to see the good in your party representative than to question your own morals. The possibility of our beliefs simply being a product of environmental factors and not a unique innate sense of morality seems dehumanizing. It eliminates our feelings of individuality. So people support Trump because of their desperate desire to preserve a tangible sense of self.

However, we can easily free ourselves from this limitation by realizing you do not need to use a tangible alignment (like remaining loyal to the republican party even when the candidate does not match the original republican morals you have) to solidify your morals. Separating yourself from a need to associate with a party is much more conducive to a life that follows your principles, rather than keeping your morals fluid in order to neatly fit under a cookie cutter title of Republican or Democrat.

It’s why John McCain endorsed Trump even after Trump openly called him a loser because he was a POW during the Vietnam War. John McCain knows, logically, he should not support him, but to not support him means he would be faltering on his party alignment which then looks like he does not have grounded morals.

So it’s not about compromising your beliefs. It’s about having the strength of your opinions stem from humanizing and understanding the opposing side. Automatically ruling out the opposing belief as “idiotic” and “dumb” is taking the Trump perspective.