So I came into this column with the intention of never going political. I reasoned that I would only comment on campus issues and that the government was not one of them.
After close inspection of campus, however, I have noticed that the opinions and statements of students and their traces suggests otherwise.
These messages I speak of range from random stenciled heads of George W. Bush spray-painted onto random sidewalks and trash cans to militant clowns and graffiti in response to the five-year anniversary of 9/11.
Most of these instances are the reactions of liberal, anti-Republican students who oppose the war, the president and almost anything the GOP sides with, but the conservative side also occasionally shines through with just as much vigor.
Don't get me wrong - it makes me happy to see students actually caring about politics regardless what side they are rooting for. One of our duties as American citizens, according to many high school government classes, is to have opinions and vote. That is what makes America great.
My problem comes in when we start to focus on the two-party system. The system is not bad for our country because it possibly gives one party advantages over the other, as the losing party at any particular moment might tell you, but because it stops us from thinking objectively about the issues.
Some people are beginning to think they hold valid and informed political views when what they really have are skewed points of views from any random number of sources. They gather their facts from non-objective news sources and the Internet, where any idea can be backed up with loads of possibly incorrect facts.
Where does this leave us?
We become a population of voters, split down the middle, whose main goal is to keep the other side out of the picture.
This predicament not only applies to the voting citizens, but to the politicians inside of those parties we are trying to eradicate as well. Candidates stop acting on issues based on the reasons they were elected but instead make it their duty to keep the other party's ideas from coming to be.
Democrats on Capital Hill threatened to filibuster when they did not like the conservative judges nominated by the president, while Republicans are using scare tactics to prevent people from electing Democrats to the senate this year. They all seem less interested in what these people believe than in whose side they are on.
I do not know if our country would be better with a Democrat as president. That is not entirely up to me to decide. All I know is that when we stop thinking about the issues and focus primarily on being against one party or the other, we lose our ability to think critically.
It is all right not to choose sides. You can be against abortion but in favor of gay marriage. If a politician comes up with a really good plan for solving our energy crisis, why should we be against it just because it is not our idea?
I hope to see the day when people stop looking at parties for their opinions and start looking within themselves for the answers. They may not necessarily be the right answers, but at least they are your own.
Christian Robinson is a junior telecommunications major and writes 'Overshare!' for the Daily News. Her views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper.
Write to Christian at cmrobinson@bsu.edu.
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