I grew up with a foot in both political camps.
Different sides of my family fell on different sides of the political spectrum. As a child, I would go house to house, striving to agree with whoever was talking to me in the moment. I was fortunate enough, though, that the thing I had in common at all those houses was that I was happy to be with whoever was taking care of me that day.
I became an adult in the national turning point between “I disagree with you, but I see where you’re coming from,” and “I will no longer talk to you because of your political stance.” I saw the 2016 election fundamentally change the way the adults in my life thought about politics and the people around them. And I got to see the cracks that have been there for my whole life grow into ravines.
If we can’t find topics of conversation with friends and family that don’t revolve around politics, we lose the connection. In losing the connection, we lose our voice with them and both sides of the political spectrum will grow more extreme.
According to Pew Research, “the overall share of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions has doubled over the past two decades from 10% to 21%,” entrenching personal ideology with party and drawing both sides further apart. As a result, “the most politically polarized are more actively involved in politics, amplifying the voices that are the least willing to see the parties meet each other halfway.”
People in both parties have reached the point where they’re no longer a fellow American who holds different beliefs because of their background — they are the Enemy, and the Enemy must be stopped at all costs.
The Enemy is easy to hate because you don’t have to look them in the face. The Enemy is the group of people you get to watch on the internet reduced to the worst parts of their ideologies. And, as a lover of political satire, I often fall into the trap of reducing an entire party to the soundbites I hear online.
We are heating up for a war with the people next door. Is that something we are prepared to fight? Are we ready for people to turn hotly contested weapons against each other? Is it time for the house divided against itself to fall? Because empires do that, and we’ve studied about how that goes.
Dismissing people because of their viewpoints also means you lose the ability to change their minds. If you take the measure of someone and decide they aren’t intelligent enough to entertain your point of view, then you contribute to the problem and the assumption that got us here.
I want to be clear here that I speak with privilege. Many people have experienced cruelty and violation of their personhood from the other side. I do not wish to invalidate those experiences or pretend they can be easily overcome.
The way I choose to use my privilege, however, is to maintain connections across the aisle for a couple reasons. One of them is to make sure I still have a voice that can reach across the divide, and I can strive to use that voice to uplift those who remain unheard. The bigger one is that I love them.
I have met people on both sides of the aisle who will share a dance, give me a ride or hug me when I’m sad. I have laughed until I cried and cried until I laughed with both sides of my family, and I care about them too much to allow political disagreement to ruin our relationship. I have performed alongside all ends of the political spectrum united by their love of the arts, and it breaks my heart whenever my theatrical sanctuary is tarnished by cruelty and prejudice.
I’m not talking about bigger political leaders. Those in power need to be held accountable for their actions because they choose to make decisions about our lives. I have no problem with protesting against bigotry of any kind, and I will gladly picket for causes I believe in, whether it irritates people in my life or not.
At the end of the day, I choose people over party, and I hope and pray that I always will.
Photo courtesy of Gallup News.