In his 2016 State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama posed the question, “… how can we make our politics reflect what’s best in us and not what’s worst?” Thinking about this question has only led me to the conclusion that politics cannot bring out the best in us, only the worst.

Consider political conversations you may have had with a friend who disagreed with your positions. In such conversations, disagreements tend to spark conflict and frustration. This is the symptom of hyper-partisanship that plagues politics.

This hyper-partisanship is caused in part by the ability of an opinion to become a law that then must be enforced. For example, minorities in New York are being targeted and arrested on subways for manspreading, the most ridiculous microaggression ever fabricated in my opinion, something that is illegal simply because it makes some people uncomfortable. Somehow, poor subway etiquette is now a legal offense. As a result, predominantly minority men are being assaulted and essentially kidnapped because their knees are too far apart while sitting on New York subways. The name of this microaggression — manspreading — also seems to imply that only men are capable of taking up too much space on the subway, which seems discriminatory as evidenced by the arrests.

Our government has created an environment in which feelings and opinions are allowed to hold compulsory power over our lives. New ideas don’t just get debated; people on all sides of the issues are often subjected to personal attacks, slander, libel, etc. It gets extremely personal when there’s really no need for any of that. 

For instance, once I was making an argument against the welfare state, saying that it was being abused by the government to create a welfare-dependent underclass. My opponent replied by saying I came from a wealthy family and had no right to an opinion on the subject. This is an example of a personal attack in the form of an attempted character assassination with the goal of invalidating my assertion via privilege. It certainly didn’t serve to refute anything nor was it really an argument itself in that context. There’s a lot of money tied up in welfare, so naturally, there’s also a lot of hostility and anger involved in debates on the subject.

This kind of attitude is toxic to societal growth. Instead of having the chance to debate a topic so that people may voluntarily and peacefully change their actions over time, ideas are thrust onto society in the form of compulsory laws with the threat of arrest if people don’t comply. The negative implications of this are compounded by the willingness of elected officials to use laws to dictate social behavior. 

Ted Cruz would be content with a ban on gay marriage, though I’m not sure why he continues to speak about the subject after the Supreme Court ruling. Also, when we consider the willingness of all 2016 presidential candidates to control the economy with government power, it can be seen that they think they can dictate how we should spend our money, which is a particular point of contention for many people. Between Donald Trump the corporatist, Bernie Sanders the socialist and Hillary Clinton, who is currently being investigated by the FBI, there are no good options for president if we’re looking for an honest, trustworthy candidate who would work to enhance personal liberties once elected. To be honest, we could never hope to find such a candidate.

So this leaves us with the daunting task of electing the lesser of two evils into the most powerful office in the world. What’s worse is that once you’ve placed this lesser evil in the White House, our entire nation, and even the world, will be subject to its will. This, again, is why politics brings out the worst in us. Not only are there no good choices, but your vote is presumably cast so that the policies you support may be forced upon others who may disagree with you. When you think about it, that’s what a vote is. This is essentially the source of hyper-partisanship. So we’re all at each other’s throats, and I don’t have a solution. It’s just good to be aware.