"And please vote. Show all the haters than you still believe in the ability of the people to govern themselves without killing each other."

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Opinion: Stop reading about the election! It’s just driving you crazy!
If you step away from politics and the media, America doesn’t look so terrible after all
By Rex Nutting, November 3, 2016

Stop it. Stop reading about the election on Facebook. Stop checking Twitter, and YouTube, and FiveThirtyEight, and Think Progress, and Infowars. Stop watching Fox News and Samantha Bee. Stop listening to Rush. Stop posting comments on the internet that label your political opponents as criminals, murderers, fascists, elitists, or racists. Stop calling people names like “libtard,” “Trumpanzees” and “Nutwing.”

Just stop already. Just walk away. Turn it all off.

The election is driving me crazy, and probably you too. And it’s driving us further apart, further away from our shared goal of making America an even greater country. Views that were once found only on the fringes have now become mainstream. More and more, we regard our political adversaries as enemies, not as our brothers and sisters and neighbors and fellow countrymen. It’s us versus them. Good versus evil.

This election is making us stupid, mean, and paranoid. I’d like to think that it’s all coming from one side (Donald Trump and his supporters), but I see too many liberals talking the same way to give them a pass. So just stop it.

Democrat or Republican, we seem to eager to believe almost anything — no matter how outlandish — that “our” side says: Hillary is a crook. Trump is a puppet of Putin. Comey is a partisan hack. Lynch is a partisan hack. The fix is in.

Our electoral political process is supposed to allow us to express our differences civilly, and then, once the votes are counted, to come back together as one nation, more or less united, united at least in the belief that our imperfect democratic republic is a whole lot better than the alternative of dictatorship.

But politics is failing us. Instead of adjudicating peacefully between competing views, politics as practiced today only widens our differences. Elections settle nothing; democracy itself is dysfunctional. And the media are eager to inflame our passions further, recognizing that the more emotional we are, the more their revenues and profits rise.

Don’t misunderstand me: Politics has always been a contact sport. Elections have always been hard fought. But once the people had spoken, the losers stepped aside to fight another day. Elections settled things, if only for two or four years. Democrats cried foul when Al Gore lost in 2000, but they accepted the results. But now we have Trump’s threat to contest the results if he doesn’t prevail.

And some true believers on both sides, egged on by an increasingly partisan and shrill media that reinforce their worst behaviors, seem unwilling to accept the election results if they don’t go their way. And if you don’t believe me, just read the comments below.

This isn’t just a matter of good manners, it’s also a matter of good government. Already, we have Republican senators announcing they will refuse to allow even a vote on any nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy if Hillary Clinton wins.

This isn’t politics as usual.

If you paid attention only to the extreme political views (which are unfortunately becoming more mainstream), you might think that America is a failed state, utterly bankrupt and corrupt to the core, its people reduced to scavenging for scraps of food and ready to shoot anyone who dares come close. It’s a disturbingly dystopian vision of American, and it’s wrong.

We are not Syria. We are not Somalia, Haiti, or Venezuela. We are not even Greece. We are not Mississippi of 1963 either. We are America, where most people (at least in real life, as opposed to online) are hardworking, honest, charitable, kind to animals, kids and strangers. Where most people have a job, a home and a dream. Where most people are sensible, except when it comes to politics, when some brains just freeze up, and the only parts that work are the id and the lizard brain.

Turn off the TV, leave the smartphone behind, and go outside. Walk around your town, your neighborhood, your city. Do you see carnage? Cities burning? A race of cruel apes ruling over humans? Do you see a police state breaking down your door to take away your guns, your religion, your Prius and your locally sourced kale? Are you afraid of your neighbors? Are you afraid of your mayor? Your president?

In the cold light of day, these paranoid nightmares fade away. If we can pry ourselves away from the 24/7 newsfeed of bile, we can see that they are nothing more than the sick dreams of a few who are using the election and the media to spread hate, venom, and bigotry.

The right wing has been preaching this end-of-days sermon for a long time. They told us that we’d all go to hell as soon as [fill in the blank]. As soon as the water is fluoridated. As soon as the Negroes can vote. As soon as women get uppity. As soon as you hear Spanish on your block. As soon as the gays can come out of the shadows. As soon as Obama takes away our guns. As soon as we’re all sent to FEMA camps. As soon as they outlaw Christmas.

Did any of their terrible predictions come true?

(In the comments, feel free to provide your list of all the things the left has warned us about that never happened.)

Yes, we still have lots of problems here in America. Too many people are poor. Too many are unskilled. Too many can’t afford a house, or an education, or a doctor, or even a decent meal without the help of food stamps. Too many are left behind because of their race, their gender, their age, or a dozen other irrelevant attributes. Too few have all the money, all the power, and all the opportunity to get ahead.

We need to fix these things, and we can. It won’t happen in a day. It won’t happen if we are suspicious and fearful of our fellow Americans. It won’t happen if we can’t trust our political system, our government, our media, or our neighbors. That’s the biggest hurdle of all. Maybe that’s why there’s so much hatred being spread — to discourage us, and to make us cynical, hopeless and alone.

Listen up! People can disagree with you and still be human. People don’t have to think like you, or look like you, or talk like you, or love like you to be good people.

Stop being so afraid! Stop obsessing about politics! Stop the hate.

And please vote. Show all the haters than you still believe in the ability of the people to govern themselves without killing each other.
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