Opinion Editorial (Op-Ed)

By Dalton Meeker

After the 2020 presidential election in which former VP Joe Biden took the presidency from incumbent Donald Trump, the massive wave of protests in 2020-21 after the brutal murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by the police, the attempted insurrection on January 6th by far-right protesters, and an ongoing pandemic that both sides continue to blame each other for, no wonder why Americans are sick and tired of the status quo and how things are going in the U.S. According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in February, 66% of Americans are worn out by the amount of news and the number of Americans irritated with how politicians and newscasters handle it is even higher.

Take CNN. Objectively, a left-leaning news network that has been under fire from the political right for years, but whose own audience is shrinking in size. But compare that to its counterpart rival Fox News, whose three most famous “hosts”, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity has seen nearly a near four-fold viewership increase.

Those who identify as Democrats are quitting left-leaning news networks and those who identify as right-leaning are flocking to people like Carlson and Ben Shapiro. It is shocking to see one entire party’s media become smaller and vice versa for the other.

 So, why?

I think this goes together with the exhaustion that Americans feel right not with the current actions that each party inoculates. The Democratic Party has without a shadow of a doubt, moved leftward onto the political scale. But it is not as left as most Americans think it has moved left. The Republican Party on the other hand has moved extremely to the right, even though the media machines have painted it has either a political party gone off the rails or just a few crackheads in the Congress.

This is the reason why we are so are polarized. We view the opposing political party as suicidal Armageddon if we support them and fail to see the truth because we are too comfortable where we are. People gripe for a change to the system, but when action knocks at the door, we run and hide under the bed. 

We resort to violence when things do not go our way. Animalistic instincts kick in and peace goes out the window. Somehow, this keeps happening again and again. In order from preventing our democracy to shatter, the facts must come over the fiction. Violent confrontation, whether it be from Black Lives Matter protesters or Trump supporters, has no place in America.

Citizens resort to violence from being irritated, understandably so, because the people in power abuse and ignore the rules that are supposed to be enforced. 

But the other major factor in fueling the fires of social unrest is the fact that people themselves who represent us are the ones causing trouble. It can be validly argued that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was a major roadblock in any legislation that President Obama tried to pass. The Senate is full of gridlock in the current administration due to the objections on behalf of senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley for nomination to dozens of positions. This is obviously frustrating for the Democrats, and the Republican base is not happy because of these politicians like Cruz, Hawley, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar, who are all vocal opponents of President Biden. 

The American people hate this gridlock but keep voting for the people who get us into gridlock. 

If we abolish the filibuster and the Congress can figure out how to bypass personal agendas, then maybe Congress can get back on track working for the American people. Voters need to vote out career politicians and put in fresher faces every couple of years to keep people of the government who serve there for decades. 

If, and only if, we do this and point out the facts instead of opinions when it comes to the media, it can be nearly guaranteed that the American people will be more ready to come together and compromise on our disagreements. After all, that is what makes us a country. We have differences, but if we come together and shed the complacency blanket, then maybe, just maybe we can change political and societal norms for the better.

Author's Note on Senate Gridlock

The Senate is infamous for its partisanship and uncompromised. Some senators, like Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska radically lament the stubbornness of both political parties. Politicians like G.K Butterfield and Rob Portman have chosen to retire from Congress because of this roadblock ‘my way or the highway mindset.