Now that we’ve settled into our rooms, rented textbooks from Chegg (or other known distributors), and classes are back in session with teachers who at times seem more intent on our learning than we are, our minds are now coming back to “the big event” that has been following our social lives all year: The 2016 Presidential Elections.
Throughout the summer, most of us have probably had our fill of all kinds of opinions and comments that the outcome may affect the rest of our lives. This discussion has infiltrated social media to the extent of an argument on twitter between the presidential candidate Donald Trump and the President of Mexico regarding a wall. You would think that facebook would have taught everyone to keep a certain level of privacy when it comes to walls.
At this point though, this kind of event doesn’t particularly stick out to us any more, as it’s just become par for the course on campaigns that have been filled with their shares of controversy.
With so much being said regarding policy, however, many of the aspects of federal law that we have become used to, such as immigration, are now being seen as pivotal for each campaign. This means that with every passing day, what matters isn’t your entire viewpoint on the matter, but rather which end of the spectrum you feel closer to, and how that compares with the two candidates. In this atmosphere you are told to choose between two: either you like immigrants or you don’t.
Having personally spent much of my life outside of the U.S., this attitude strikes me as particularly odd, since immigration is a very important matter on which people have the right to their own views and opinions. While media outlets say that it’s about jobs and the economy, the truth is that any decision made on this will impact the way the country is viewed around the world. Clamp down too hard on immigration, and the promise and hope that America used to represent will vanish in a heartbeat. Allow too much freedom of entry, and the view may change to that of the USA not seeming quite so “American” anymore.
What we should all do, especially in times when everyone is searching for a category to fit in, is recognize that there is no perfect balance for any of the subjects being discussed, and the outcomes of these policies are usually as unpredictable as the outcome of the election itself.
We should see that each person can only base their thoughts and predictions on what they’ve experienced personally, and this is by no means bad, but we need to keep in mind that everyone will always have their own point of view that may differ from ours. Part of the individuality that makes us so proud of our society is seeing that between the extremes of “Democrat” or “Republican,” we are in fact in our own place on the spectrum, and even something like an election won’t be changing that any time soon.
