Genuine discussion defines meaningful discourse

Our nation always faces a variety of problems – their degree depending on who and how many people you ask. These days, such problems have split our country into aggressively opposing sides that refuse to work towards a quality solution that will improve the lives of Americans.

Unfortunately, during the last few Presidential administrations, Americans have not been much help to their own cause. You see, we love to point our fingers at crooked politicians who get nothing done in Washington. Yet many of us only point the finger at whichever political party we oppose even when our own side is guilty of similar grievances. 

Furthermore, some claim our two-party system has diminished our elections to nothing more than a choice between lesser evils, and that choice makes it easy for politicians to flaunt a divisive positions on the most polarizing issues such as abortion, the second amendment or socialism

For example, politicians are enabled to adopt the most radical position on abortion by facing no debate within their own party. By then, they aggressively counter the opposing party’s ‘radical’ position on the issue because garnering votes is easier when the choice is black and white. 

American citizens have enabled politicians to paint these issues as simpler than they are because we refuse to uncloud the nonsense spewed by genuinely crooked leaders. Our lack of critical discussion with the real and mass of citizens has left most people in a vacuum which politicians fill with distorted information.

This misinformation is then broadcast through social media where people fail to use critical thinking skills to assess truthfulness and purpose of the message. After they share, comment, and like or dislike the post, the process of arguing about nothing begins. 

From these social media arguments nothing but anger, dislike and hostility towards those who oppose you is gained. It’s impossible to learn anything because we were probably arguing about something that was untrue or something we had little knowledge about in the first place. 

If we want to learn about the issues, we should leave social media behind, listen to the words of many different people, speak with many different people and then do our research into the issue. Likely we may find the issue is not so black and white after all, and common ground is not so uncommon.