Poetry & Politics

     Growing up in Jasper & Newton County meant growing up inside contradictions.
      It meant church on Sundays, neighbors who would stop to help you if your truck broke down, and families who would bring casseroles when somebody died.    

     But it also meant growing up surrounded by deep-rooted division, generational prejudice, political fear, and a worldview that often taught people to distrust anyone different from themselves.

The outside world looked at places like ours and saw ignorance. People inside communities like ours looked at the outside world and saw moral collapse.

Both sides misunderstood each other more than they realized.
      For most of my younger years, I leaned hard into conservative politics. Not just conservative, Tea Party conservative. I believed every talking point. I watched one channel, trusted one narrative, and saw politics almost like a moral war between good and evil. If somebody disagreed with me politically, I didn’t just think they were wrong. I thought they were dangerous.
      And I know now I wasn’t alone.
     Millions of Americans on both the left and right have been conditioned to see each other as enemies instead of fellow citizens.

         We’ve been trained to react emotionally before thinking critically. Fear became profitable. Anger became addictive. Outrage became entertainment.
 

   For me, the first crack in that worldview came after the Benghazi scandal.

      Like many conservatives at the time, I believed every headline and every accusation surrounding Hillary Clinton. I believed the narrative completely. I repeated it passionately. But years later, when investigations concluded and many of the most explosive accusations turned out to be exaggerated, misleading, or outright false, I waited for accountability from the media sources that had fueled my outrage.

It never came.

    There was no moment of honesty. No serious reckoning. No admission that fear and anger had been amplified far beyond reality.     

     The same outlets simply moved on to the next outrage cycle, leaving viewers emotionally invested in battles built on half-truths and distortion.

That betrayal hit me hard.

      Not because it changed my political beliefs overnight, but because it shattered my trust. I realized something terrifying: if media companies could manipulate emotions that easily, then maybe I wasn’t as informed as I thought I was.
    And when trust breaks, people often swing hard in the opposite direction.

That’s exactly what I did.

     For a while, I went completely left. I absorbed liberal talking points with the same intensity I once absorbed conservative ones.      

    I traded one echo chamber for another. I stayed angry. I judged my own family members. I viewed people I loved through a political lens instead of a human one.
      What took me years to understand is this: extremism is exhausting no matter which side it comes from.
      The farther you drift into political tribalism, the more you lose the ability to see humanity in people who disagree with you.      

      Every issue becomes a battlefield. Every conversation becomes a loyalty test. Every disagreement becomes proof that somebody is either ignorant, hateful, brainwashed, or evil.

That mindset is destroying this country.

      And here’s the uncomfortable truth neither side wants to admit: most ordinary Americans actually want the same basic things.
People want safe communities. They want affordable groceries. They want their children protected and educated. They want opportunities to work hard and build stable lives. They want dignity. They want fairness. They want freedom. They want to matter.
      Most conservatives are not monsters. Most liberals are not radicals. Most Americans are somewhere in the middle, exhausted by being told to hate each other.
      The loudest voices online do not represent the majority of this country. Social media rewards outrage, not understanding. Cable news rewards fear, not nuance. Politicians raise money by convincing voters the other side is coming to destroy their lives.
     Meanwhile, regular Americans sit at the same ballgames, work the same jobs, struggle with the same bills, bury the same loved ones, and pray for the same futures for their children.
     The truth is, this country was never meant to function as two armies at war with each other.
      It was meant to function through disagreement without dehumanization.
      Somewhere along the way, we stopped believing that was possible.
      We forgot how to listen without immediately preparing a counterattack. We forgot how to admit when our side is wrong. We forgot that changing your mind is not weakness , it’s growth. We forgot that patriotism does not belong exclusively to one political party.
     I still lean right on many issues.      

     I believe in personal responsibility, strong communities, faith, hard work, and accountability. But I also believe compassion matters. I believe systemic problems are real. I believe government has a role in protecting vulnerable people. I believe no political ideology has a monopoly on truth.

Most importantly, I believe Americans are being manipulated into hating one another because division keeps powerful people powerful.

Fear keeps ratings high. Anger keeps donations flowing. Division keeps citizens distracted.
    And ordinary people pay the price.
    Families stop speaking.     

    Friendships end. Communities fracture. Children grow up learning contempt before understanding.
     We cannot survive as a nation if we continue seeing political opponents as enemies instead of neighbors.
    That doesn’t mean abandoning convictions. It means holding convictions with humility. It means recognizing that good people can arrive at different conclusions based on different life experiences.

   A factory worker in rural Texas and a teacher in downtown Chicago may see the world differently, but both deserve respect and a voice.
America does not need more outrage merchants. It needs bridge builders.
     It needs people willing to say: “My side is wrong sometimes too.” “I may disagree with you politically and still care about you.” “We can debate policies without destroying each other.”
 

  I came from a place where many people were taught to fear the outside world. Then I spent years fearing the people I came from. Neither mindset brought peace. Neither mindset brought truth.

What finally did was learning to listen.

  Listening to conservatives without assuming hatred. Listening to liberals without assuming stupidity. Listening to people’s lived experiences instead of dismissing them because they didn’t fit a political narrative.
    That changed me more than any news network ever could.
    America does not heal through winning cultural wars. It heals through remembering that we belong to one another whether we vote the same way or not.
    

   And maybe getting back to the basics starts there.