We've got a Trump, we've got a Clinton; we've even got a big Johnson and a Dr. Stein. This is the election year, and talking about politics sucks more than usual.
I'm sure almost everyone has had to deal with this to some extent, they bring up their political opinion around friends and/or family and all of a sudden everyone's involved in a two-hour long debate that started with marijuana legalization and ended with Gary Johnson being more athletic than Donald Trump.
Look, talking about politics is never easy, simply because no matter how much you might agree with someone on one issue, you're going to disagree with them on something else.
For example, both Gary Johnson and Jill Stein support legalizing marijuana, but they still have a lot of issues they disagree on strongly.
Just like politicians support each other on some issues and disagree on others, normal people have the same problem.
At the moment, my parents and I all support the same candidate for president, but throughout this election we've gotten into some heated debates over policies we disagree on.
In some cases it can even drive wedges between people: I might agree with this person on 90% of the issues, but they might have a strong opinion on something I have a strong opposing opinion on.
It's an endless cycle, politics, we see people come into office, we see change happen that we like, partially like, partially dislike, or blatantly dislike. We show our content or discontent, then election season comes around and all of a sudden millions of other people are agreeing with you on some issues and a candidate is loudly and proudly standing with you.
At the same time, you have friends and families living different lives than you and they're disagreeing with you. I found out this year alone that many of my friends and even family members have a very different political perspective than I do.
The problem I've noticed the most is the use of questionable information from all sides. One side will accuse the other side of this and then the other side will accuse the other side of this and very often it has no strong basis. Donald Trump has lied a lot this election, blatantly in some cases like when he claimed he didn't want to go into Iraq. Don't worry, even Clinton has lied too this election.
Supporters of these politicians take these lies and use them to bolster their candidate or attack the enemy. The problem with this is that the opposing side is good at calling out lies from their opponents since it makes them look bad, but bad at calling themselves on their own lies. And that's simply human nature, we lie, and we don't want to get caught lying. This outpouring of lies creates a weak platform for candidates that can easily be broken down, and no one on either side likes being caught with their pants down.
Still, this election has been more turbulent than others and talking about it seriously has sucked. We'll always disagree on issues, but part of politics is compromise, and that's something we haven't seen much this election season. So, throughout all the heated debates, remember two things: you probably agree on a lot of things with the person you're arguing with and remember, not everything you read or hear is always true, so before you argue, fact check your candidate and yourself, cause like Dr. House one said, "everybody lies."
