I have tried to use my position at The Leader to avoid getting involved in politics or picking sides, but today I’d like to talk to you about somebody who I think is supremely qualified to be the next president of the United States: Donald J. Trump.
Just kidding!
But if I wasn’t, I hope you wouldn’t grab the torches and pitchforks quite so quickly.
It’s no secret to those that know me well which candidate I plan on voting for on April 19, and that his stances are pretty much the opposite of what Trump has put forth to the voting public thus far. My friends and family know I support this candidate because I’ve been setting aside money every month for nearly a year now to benefit the campaign, and because I try to carve out as much time as possible as I can to volunteering. Part of that job means talking to people who disagree with you, sometimes by a whole lot.
I have been hung up on, ignored and told my candidate of choice is a “commie bastard” (three guesses who?). But one thing that I’ve never experienced is flat-out rudeness, even from people who disagree vehemently with many of the ideals I hold dear. Sometimes I have great conversations with people that the media tells me I should consider sub-human. Even if I don’t speak to a single like-minded person, I walk away from those experiences the better for it.
I know there have been several instances of violent rhetoric turned into actual violence during this election, but for the most part I don’t think most people are itching to start something. I think most people, like me, are tired. And most people, like me, have legitimate reasons for supporting the people they do. They are not demons conjured by the opposition; they are not roadblocks on the way to success.
To paraphrase somebody much smarter, the universe is very big — so big, in fact, that there’s room for a lot of people to be both be right about something and disagree completely. I’m not saying we need to find every view persuasive, intelligent or even legitimate, but we must understand that they come from a place that’s real and genuine and worth talking about. I find almost every single thing Trump has said in the last couple years downright deplorable, but I won’t change anybody’s mind by shouting them down.
I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about my generation, but I do wonder if the marketplace of ideas sees less business these days. A good, robust discussion seems hard to find. Instead of challenging each other, we surround ourselves in an echo chamber of Facebook posts and ideal narratives, occasionally venturing onto someone else’s page to call them a racist or a bigot or an asshole but not much else.
But if we really confronted our own beliefs, we would walk away either having a more assured understanding of them or a better set of opinions in their place.
Tell me what’s not great about that?
As we prepare the necessary medicine for five more months of a presidential election, I hope we can remember that, at our very best, it’s not us against them and you against me — it’s all of us, reading the same book and coming to different conclusions. Whether my candidate wins or loses, the biggest mistake I could make is to walk away from it all thinking I was the protagonist. It would make for an awfully big, fatal flaw.