Staff editorial: Political tolerance

Rebecca Ward 

Hypocrisy can be an issue in many different areas of life and can be especially annoying when politics are involved. Have you ever noticed that those with certain political views will preach at you to be tolerant and accepting of everyone else and their beliefs, yet turns around and judges you for yours? Practice what you preach, people. Hypocrisy is just downright annoying. It is very important to make others aware of what’s right and wrong as long as you aren’t turning around and doing the very thing you just told them not to. We need to do better at supporting each other. To help ensure the fact that you aren’t engaging in hypocrisy, having an open mind when you are speaking with someone about politics can help to avoid this problem.

Having an open mind is really important in this day in age. When a person is discussing politics, they have to have an open mind so that the conversation can flow well. When a person has the ability to be open minded, they are allowing their mind to grow in the way of politics. In order to have a political conversation, the people in the conversation may have to agree to disagree. It is important to understand where the other person comes from and where they gained their political opinion from. In this society, we will not get anywhere politically if people do not try to at least see eye to eye. Good communication is a great place to start.

Communication is key with anything in life. If you don’t like something that your boss is doing, you go and talk to them and tell them what is going on and how they can fix it to make you feel better working there. When people talk about politics, many are too busy trying to change your mind or prove the opposing party wrong. Stop and listen. Many different people have different views and different opinions. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and many should listen and respect each other. We need to learn to listen better and look past the person’s party affiliation as well.

When discussing politics, people tend to focus on the person’s politics rather than the person themselves. Politics used to be secondary or even tertiary to a person, but now we seem to only focus on someone’s politics. Sometimes a person’s politics can say something important about them, but most of the time, it’s simply just a label that really has no bearing on someone’s actual personality. It’s also possible for someone to disagree in certain places with who they are affiliated with, but labeling them by only their party takes away any nuance of the person and their views.