With the upcoming election cycle, as well as the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, political aggression is coming to the forefront.
Even smaller towns in states that most would deem as a majority of one party have started to feel the effects of this aggression. The college town of Moscow may not have endured some of the worst cases of political aggression, but it is still the perfect mixing pot for this aggression.
The University of Idaho campus has been home to multiple protests and public speakers ranging from Christ Church to Pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Both of those situations involved counter-protestors.
That list doesn’t even count the situations in which UI has had to get involved. On multiple occasions, when a pro-life group shows up to protest on campus, UI puts signs up along the Academic Mall to warn students about the graphic imagery they use.
All of these scenarios just lead to the same conclusion: Political differences and aggression are starting to become more prominent in our society. This dangerous road that the United States of America is traveling down needs to stop soon.
There are already extremists on both the liberal and conservative sides of the political aisle who have been calling for either a civil war or a revolution.
The main driving force behind this political aggression can be attributed to extremists now having an outlet for their thoughts on social media and, in turn, gaining a platform. This also creates a situation where representatives in the United States Congress have started to express their views.
For example, right after the assassination attempt, multiple representatives blamed Democrats and the media for everything, even going as far as saying that President Joe Biden called for the assassination himself. According to Fox 5 Atlanta, these representatives have faced backlash but don’t think they’ll lose their jobs anytime soon.
These exact actions and words cause these situations in the first place. Rather than instantly jumping to conclusions or getting aggressive with the other side, we should first try to understand why they think that way.
Even if you aren’t able to completely sway them to your side, just sitting down with someone and understanding their side may limit the amount of aggression between us.
There are situations where this has been proven to work, such as when one guy managed to convince nearly 200 members of the Ku Klux Klan, according to NPR. This article shows that sitting down with someone and talking or finding something to connect with can limit aggression and convince someone that what they have been told their entire life is wrong.
In order to prevent a possible civil war or revolution, instead of yelling at each other and staying behind a screen, we should go out and talk to these people one-on-one and find out why they think what they think.
Connor Anderson can be reached at [email protected]