This past week has left many engaged citizens questioning their allegiance to Team Red and Team Blue. Many Republicans are disgusted by President Trump’s latest bout of toxic rhetoric, while Democrats lament the infighting and divisiveness within their party.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi had stark disagreements with left-wing Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib over the future of the Democratic Party, with some even suggesting Pelosi is a racist. But before their disagreements could reach a boiling point, President Trump sent out a tweet that sparked a political riot and consumed the news cycle. He wrote: “Why don’t [the four congresswomen] go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
In a continuation of the chaos, Trump’s North Carolina rally featured attendees chanting “Send her back!” in reference to Somalia-born Omar. While Trump claimed that he was “not happy” about the chants, he was criticized strongly by members of both parties for not doing more to stop the crowd.
In the wake of the political upheaval, Republican leaders such as Texan Rep. Will Hurd condemned Trump’s remarks:
Both sides seemed to have an acute sense that they’d reached rock bottom. The sense of hopelessness that accompanied this week’s events highlights the problem with placing so much trust in our politicians.
Americans are deeply emotional about this week’s events because we place deep faith in our politicians. Politicians are seen as the people best positioned to save us from the problems of the world. Political campaigning often relies on this idea, telling us that if we vote for the opposition, the world will go up in flames.
There are no moderated emotions when it comes to politics — increasingly, everything is framed as life or death. This poses a grave problem.
When you believe unequivocally in someone’s ability to make your life better, your world shatters when they let you down. Yet because of the imperfect nature of both human beings and our political atmosphere as a whole, politicians will inevitably and frequently fail.
Of course, we should have high expectations for our politicians, but it is a mistake to laud them as saviors. Perhaps we should look around in our communities and notice the teachers, law enforcement, clergy, healthcare professionals, dentists, baristas, and engineers that really make our communities great — because President Trump won’t stop tweeting foolish things any time soon, and Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi are never going to coexist the way Democrats would hope.
It is the nature of politics to be consuming, but despair will not move us forward. While we acknowledge that our politicians need to improve, we cannot let their failings dictate our attitudes toward our lives and our communities or succumb to the toxic lure of blind faith and empty promises.
Elizabeth Nealon is editor of Clemson University’s newspaper, The Sensible Tiger, and is currently interning at a think tank in Washington, D.C.
