I'm Not Trying to Convince You of Anything, Promise.

In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.

- Thich Nhat Hanh

I've had a lot on my mind lately, as I'm sure you do.

I've lost sleep, worried myself sick, and anxiously bit my nails to nubbins.

We're all (around here, anyway) engaged in the election and have been watching the same debates, the same news coverage, and the same TV ads. And, yet, we're more divided than ever.

I have friends and family planted firmly on both sides of the political divide, so I hear both complain about and mock the other "side" - and as many others ave lamented, the fact that there are "sides" and we (to have any real chance of our candidate being elected) have to choose between two extremes is insane, anyway.

Whoever gets elected, I don't think our country will go to hell- despite emails, blog posts, videos, and websites I've read that insist otherwise. My dad claims that Barack is a terrorist who will make our country socialist and all freedom will be lost; while my coworker maintains that McCain doesn't care about the poor or the rest of the world.

Being Catholic only further exacerbates the divide - some Catholics ascribe to the One Catholic Way to Vote philosophy, and contend that a vote for Barack is a vote for violence against innocent babies. Other Catholics assert that a vote for McCain is a vote against Catholic Social Teaching.

These positions worry me - not because people disagree, but because of the way they disagree and the way that leads them to treat others.

And it saddens me so. Because I truly want to have a dialogue where we all respectfully discuss what is important to us, what excites us, why we're voting for X, what we hope for the future, and so on - without automatically assuming that someone who is voting for the other guy is an idiot who doesn't care about ______ (fill in: America, terrorists, babies, freedom, homosexuals, etc.).

When I've tried to have an honest and open dialogue with the "other side" this year, I've ended up being shouted at and cried into my ice cream sundae at Friendly's. No joke. That's hard to recover from.

I think the root of much of my frustration is that I feel as though people cling to political parties more than they consider candidates and issues. My 17-year-old cousin proclaimed on Facebook that she's "a [major political party]. Deal with it." People cheered her on: "Yeah! Proclaim it, girl!"

Wha-ha? How can someone, at such a young age - make that kind of weighted decision? To limit your views to a political party when you are 17 years old? That worries me. We're getting to be more polarized earlier and earlier - we're teaching our kids to see the world through our eyes instead of encouraging them to develop their own opinion at all.

Or as one of my friends would say, "Who wants to raise sheep!?"

Sure, it's much easier to just vote how your parents voted. To not examine the issues and to take other people's word for it. Examining and wrestling with issues is hard work. (It's easy to get sidetracked by the crazy 24 hour media circuits - but we've seemed to have forgotten about issues and pretend the candidates are celebrities worthy of gossip and stalking.) As factcheck.org will show - both candidates are misleading like crazy and NEITHER is perfect.
That's hard to swallow - for both sides.

This isn't meant to be a political rant or a "VOTE FOR OBAMA/MCCAIN!" post - merely a "How the heck did we get so darn polarized? And how do we make it stop?"

I, for one, pledge to never, ever vote based on party line. I'll examine each and every candidate I vote for.

Please, lovely, wonderful commenters - play nice if you want to say something, okay? Mwah.