coastline

I wholeheartedly agree that, as a nation, we are too divided, and a lot of our issues stem from our inability to engage with the people around us who are different. We all need to strive to appeal to our common good, recognize we have more in common than what sets us apart, and lift each other up.

However.

Having grown up in a conservative household, I can tell your firsthand that, without just being antagonistic, a lot of division is fostered by groups of people who place their own personal comfort and tolerance of others over the collective good. When these people are in power, our collective unity can be shattered by just that half alone. After all, unity takes two to make it work.

For example, right now, the Republican president is cutting funding to “blue” states on the basis that they didn’t vote for him. Every state which was targeted went for Harris. On the flip side, Biden’s policies massively benefited “red” states.

The whole idea of a “red” or “blue” state is itself misleading and dangerous. Massachusetts, itself an incredibly Democratic-leaning state, still has hundreds of thousands of Republican voters, and the opposite is true for “red” states. This isn’t even a victory for Republicans; it’s just cruelty done for spectacle and distraction.

There’s a careful line here; if I were to just point at half of all Americans and blame them for our lack of unity, I’d be a hypocrite. However, I can easily say they put the most divisive figure of our lifetimes into power–twice. That wasn’t a mistake, and they’ll try to do it again.