Separate people from their politics

I really dislike dating. It’s not the dating part that so much unnerves me as it is the having to get the person across from your dinner plate to comprehend the real you. The first few times I started dating it was fun, but now it just seems trite. It’s always the same thing: about what I do for fun and what I want to do in the future.

Having just moved back to the U.S. from New Zealand, my love life was forced to start anew. And at the bequest of my friends, I threw myself back onto that horse. Knowing my hesitance, my friends arranged a blind date and I agreed to make a cameo at our fine Chili’s establishment in Westwood to meet this stranger over drinks.

This date, at first, broke no mold and proceeded with casual questioning of my past and interests. However, halfway through my strawberry-mango margarita, I was asked what my political affiliation is. Personally, I dislike getting into politics with people I have just met, but I complacently answered that I am an Independent.

You can imagine my shock of not only realizing I slurped through a $7 drink in two minutes, but also that my reply was greeted with a disapproving snort. Apparently, there was no such thing as being an Independent to my date. In an attempt to explain my beliefs in a nutshell, I replied I rarely vote by political affiliations. My opinions on individual matters have nothing to do with Democratic or Republican tenets or candidates, and I prefer to research the issue or candidate at hand and make a decision abstaining from party affiliation. Again, this was seemingly a bad answer.

My date began to chide me about the evils of the Republican platform and “how could I ever support any piece of legislation or candidate drafted from the right?” And this is what the point of my rant has been meandering toward.

When did politics become so personal? Historically, the original two-party system of the U.S. had little gripes with one another. There were the Federalists and Anti-Federalists who quipped about whether we should fashion a states’ rights government or a federal institution where most of the bickering resulted from raising or lowering the tariff.

Going back even 50 years ago, Republicans and Democrats coexisted knowing that what a person believed did not invalidate the character of someone.

I am not sure when becoming a Democrat became an adjective for describing the entirety of a person. Since when does being a Republican make your position on issues absolute? And finally, why is it we cannot divorce politics from people? At the end of the day, everyone must realize that regardless of one’s political beliefs, we are not defined solely by them and we are not right to dislike another person wholly because that other person favors tax cuts.

Politics are not supposed to be any more personal than one’s favorite margarita flavor; both are subjective preferences. Though certain issues may generate more emotion than others, such that it becomes hard to separate a person from his or her political beliefs, you must realize that you are reducing an entire person’s worth. You are not crediting who they are as a collective person and insisting that a person’s opinion defines his or her totality as a human.

It’s as if I judged and disliked a person because they preferred daiquiris.

Nadler is a fourth-year world arts and culture student.

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