There’s been a plague that has been active in our country for as long as I’ve been alive and most likely before I was ever born. Almost everyone has it or has suffered from it at one point in their lives. It affects every race, gender, sexual orientation, and age group. It doesn’t matter if you are religious or not. It’s doesn’t differentiate between political affiliation. It’s a combination of two diseases of the mind: tribalism and partisan thinking.
Most of us let these two things paint our view of the world and of our fellow human beings. We try to discredit those that go against our way of thinking and shut down any rational discussions with baseless accusations. We equate the fringe members of their groups as representation of the group itself. We use blanket statements about them as fact even though there is more nuance to them. We even go so far as to de-humanize them to justify ourselves for saying incredibly disgusting things about them.
We spread fiction as fact and we make weak excuses for the prominent members of our tribe when they get called out for faux pas or egregious and damaging errors. We resort to juvenile excuse like “But look what THEY did/said”.
Respectful, sincere, and honest discussion has been long gone. Empathy is a thing of the past. There is rarely critical thinking on a topic. We have resorted to immediately reacting with our emotions without even learning about what we are reacting to.
This is our greatest problem that we face which prevents us from solving the other problems we face as brothers and sisters. The politicians prey on us because of this. Simply look at any problem in politics and how it is politicized for people to take sides.
We have the ability to be so much better than how we are yet we continually choose to divide ourselves. We are what kills the American Dream. Imagine what we could achieve if we took the time to drop the hate, listen to one another instead of argue or dismiss, and truly work to fix the problems that we all face as humans.
There are no black or white people. There are no gay or straight people. There are no republicans or democrats. There are only people. When we realize that and start acting accordingly we will see a lot of the problems that affect all of us become solved.
Juxtaposed To A Fault 