Editorial: The divide, “unfriending” isn’t only a political stance or because of an opinion

By: 
Jarrod Schoenecker

For those of you who are not a part of social media, you may have had a quieter election season among friends. It’s possible perhaps that you even lost a few within your circle or that they associate differently with you now — whether quietly or known.

This political season has likely been the most toxic in most people’s memories and people are losing friends, neighbors, and relatives over it. You can’t technically lose relatives but you can disassociate with them. Even if you are not losing people in your circle, you are likely associating differently with at least some of them — I am no different.

Whoever in your circle of people has changed their behavior with you or has “unfriended” you in some way, most of them are doing so not simply because you voted republican or democratic, Trump or Harris, nor are they removing themselves from you in some way because of just an opinion.

Maybe opinions is where we should start. There seems to be a loss of knowledge in what an opinion is and what a fact is. I believe that this is where the divide started.

So many people have lost their way in the information they are fed, not relying on reputable sources of information that can be backed-up, something that is known to be true, or, in other words, facts. This has led many down a path of believing too many things that are not true or highly skewed.

Issues like, “the economy is bad,” were thrown out. This is false. Our inflation rate has been brought down to almost 2%, a much faster recovery than most of the world, and large businesses are reporting immense profits. This means that major businesses are doing well but are not passing this on to the average worker.

Many people feel like, key words “feel like,” they are being cheated out of something and that the economy is bad, despite the truth. People are immediate to their environment where the grocery store prices matter to them in daily life and the type of rhetoric above reinforces how their pocketbooks are feeling, whether or not the statements of the economy are true or not.

Another way in which the divide has been created, as seen by the landscape of the voting map by county in red and blue, is the rural and urban divide. Most urban areas voted democratic, while most rural areas voted republican. There are a few ways to see this.

Urban areas are filled with less home ownership and also feel the effects of laws, business, and other decisions much more often, as well as encountering a sea of different people on a regular basis that may not reflect their own make-up. Rural areas, however, are more isolated, typically land and property owners, who most of the time remain in their own circles that comprise mostly of people similar to their own make-up.

The difference between the rural and urban scene is vast. Ideas of the city life portrayed by their republican counterparts may ring true with them — a fear of the unknown and cherry-picked pieces of media being displayed for them, but not the reality of the situation as a whole.

There are multitudes of different things like what is written above. Probably the most influential decision to change relationships between people has to do with some very primal instincts — how people are treated and the track record of how they have been treated by the political parties, which may be more powerful than truth of other things itself. It is something that surly affects people at their core values.

Furthering the false narrative of the party with the false narrative that Haitian migrants were eating pets, obviously not true and proven to not be true, Trump said, "In Springfield, they are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there,” and then had no way to back up his claims but stuck to it. Shortly thereafter, Trump’s running mate JD Vance was asked about the encounter and offered up this statement rather than directly admitting it wasn’t true, “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

This kind of pandering is what started to really hurt people but somehow still wins over many of the republican party supporters. The immense amount of false and hate-filled items are otherwise accepted as true, blindly or misinformed, or are just a peripheral item to greater ones republican-voting individuals are concerned about and are okay with dismissing.

This dismissing is not okay for so many people. The example set forth by such people in power, as the office of the President of the United States, is one that carries a multitude of influence — both in terms of power presiding but also in what is acceptable to the average citizen to do to people who surround them.

As seen in Springfield, Ohio, where law enforcement had to intervene to make sure kids could just make it to school safely after bomb threats were called in and many of the students were harassed in regards to the false rhetoric of eating cats and dogs.

These things didn’t happen to rural people. These things happened to urban people. The same is generally true about other things when it comes to race and for those who have different ideas of what gender is. Rural voters live in a more unified fashion with little exposure to such things, leaving a gap that is understood very differently between rural and urban groups.

This exposure difference yields very different mentalities in how people vote. On the democratic side, there are a lot of people who now fear for their own lifestyle, and some their lives, because of the outcome of this election. The immense posting about the suicide helpline (text or call 988 at any time), and unfriending of people on social media platforms and in real life by democratic-leaning voters is real.

In response to that, people who voted or at least are open to saying they voted republican replied with posts about how you shouldn’t unfriend people because of their opinion or political view. Democratic voters are unfriending republican voters.

Republican voters are unfriending democratic voters too for being too “woke” or “liberal” as well, it goes both ways. Personally, I have a level of being too liberal as well on some issues, but I certainly do not identify with the republican party of today in any fashion — which comes out of reality and truth for me.

Many people see a vote red as a vote against who they are as a person. It’s a denial of things truthful — of reality, supporting behaviors and actions that go completely against how they stand as a person, and how they would like to see other people treated.

So, it isn’t that someone just unfriended you because they had a difference of opinion or because you voted for Trump, it is because you decided to vote against what they stand for as a person and they believe it is a showing of your character.

I can stand to be friends with someone who has a difference of opinion on whether or not a school referendum should be passed but I can’t stand to be friends with people that deny science and truth, or whether or not it’s okay for a proven continual liar and felon to be President of the United States. There is a difference of character there that goes deeper than an opinion or a political stance.

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