By Marco Tellez
As President-elect Joe Biden was projected to win the election Saturday, Nov. 7, hostility grew between the Republican and Democratic parties. Such was the case during the 2016 election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and during the Trump administration. The recent clash between parties makes it more apparent now than ever that the polarization of politics is harming the country as a whole. The Democratic and Republican parties have lost cooperation amongst each other, a dangerous milestone towards mass secession, or even another civil war. In the interest of preserving the nation, the public must decrease the power of the right and the left, forcing unity between the two groups instead of fighting for control.
The recent antagonism between the two parties has caused the most division in the nation since the Civil War. It has reached the point where California has developed a “calexit” campaign in order to secede from the United States, and they’re not the only state. The Texas Nationalist Movement—an organization striving for Texas secession—claimed to have benefitted from the chaos of the first presidential debate as their number of supporters rose. According to a recent article from the movement, President of the Texas Nationalist Movement Daniel Miller stated that any hope for fixing the country “evaporated in that 90-minute-free-for-all masquerading as a debate”. The longer political parties remain in a constant battle for control, the harder it will be to keep the United States from fracturing.
The constant division from the Republic and Demcratic Parties has also resulted in the media joining politics. FoxNews and CNN are notorious for expressing a partisan viewpoint in politics, and many other news outlets behave in the same manner; such bias is harmful to the public. Newspapers are responsible for delivering facts to people so they understand the world around them, but if there is no discretion between truth and bias then reality becomes morphed for many people. When people’s main source of information contains advertisements that can be defined as propaganda, the public should be concerned. Since the main source of the media’s prejudice comes from politics, it is crucial to limit the potency of political conflict in order to preserve the objective truth from opinion.
The point of political parties is to make sure an individual feels represented, so one could argue that maintaining the prominence of each party is vital to make sure that no one feels left out. The problem is that in its current state, the parties don’t represent younger generations of Americans. Such is the case for students at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. According to the Scribe, UCCS’s student newspaper, Republicans and Democrats on campus have expressed disappointment in their lack of representation. Nicholas St. John, a member of the College Democratic chapter at UCCS, claimed that neither party “was particularly inspiring” and that Democrats in politics “do not inspire the young people of this country.” UCCS had a 60.9% voter turnout for the previous election, “much higher than the average turnout for young people” according to St. John, making it reasonable to infer that most youth have similar feelings towards their representatives as UCCS represents a large number of younger voters. If representatives in government fail to embody the ideals of a major group in society, then amends must be made to ensure that more people are represented.
Elections should no longer be about Red vs. Blue, but should focus on the best solutions for the country as the elections were originally intended for. The best way to decrease the power of factions and increase the importance of problem solving is to have discussions at home about societal issues. Politicians circulate a large portion of their campaigns around one side of a controversy while denying the strong arguments of the other, but there is very little acknowledgement that these issues require compromise in order to solve adequately. If the public begins to have genuine discussions at home about issues in the country, then when the next election arrives people will be more likely to choose a leader based on solutions than their party. It is time to encourage healthy debates at home that are backed up by research and experts in the field. When the majority of the public loses partisanship, then politics will no longer be about control, but will instead focus on the best technique to improve the country for everyone and guarantee that no one is left unrepresented.
This is an outstanding article, Marco. You bring up some very good points and it is obvious that you have done your research. I commend you. Keep up the good work.