Extra Credit: Political Polarization

         I had not ever really understand the idea of political polarization before this class. I feel as though I had seen instances of it but when actually learning the term in class made these situations more present and more relevant when looking at the political world

         Political polarization talks about the idea that everything has gone to the extremes, regarding politics, whether something be very conservative or very liberal, nobody is willing to listen to the other side.  When thinking of instances of this I look back to this last Presidential election.  I noticed this idea of political polarization even among my friend groups.  When discussing politics you had those who were either pro-Trump or pro-Hillary and absolutely no in between.  But it was just that they stood behind one candidate, it was that whenever the opposing candidate did something wrong it was all about bashing them and their beliefs, but when an incident was brought up with their own candidate they ignored it as if it was nothing.
        I keep saying they as if my friends were the only guilty ones and I was sitting on the side-lines as the all mighty one able to see both sides.  Which is wrong, I was just as guilty of it during the election as my friends were.  While I understood some of the things my candidate did were wrong, there was no way I was going to admit it.  I was going to point out the flaws of the opposing candidate because I was acting closedminded and unwilling to see from the other perspective.  While neither candidates were perfect, in fact they were both far from it, they both had faults.  But because of this idea of political polarization, everyone views their own belief as the only right one and refuse to admit any part of theirs as wrong.  This causes problems, especially because instead of finding middle ground and seeing the positive aspects to the opposing candidates we constantly keep a narrow minded view of them as the enemy.