Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. It was decisive – he won every swing state. It wasn’t rigged or stolen – the election was free and fair, just like in 2020. It wasn’t undemocratic – Trump won the popular vote as well as the electoral vote. The will of the American people prevailed, and they chose Trump.

This result has been met by shock and horror on the left, as Democrats struggle to comprehend how people could have voted for someone they see as racist, sexist, bigoted, fascist and a threat to American Democracy. Faced with the prospect of another Trump term, with the potential to cause far more damage than the first, many on the left have channeled their fear into anger towards Trump, and towards his supporters.

This sentiment was neatly summed up in an Instagram post I saw the day after the election. It read: “if u voted for trump, and I mean this in the most disrespectful way possible, I do not want anything to do with you. Not only did you vote against basic human rights and equality, you decided racism, homophobia, islamophobia, transphobia & misogynistic behavior wasn’t a deal breaker.”

I found this post infuriating, because this is exactly the type of attitude that drives people to Trump. This person has decided that a single vote someone has cast makes them evil and completely irredeemable. They’ve decided that your political beliefs are everything and if someone votes for Trump, they are not worthy of friendship or kindness. This view is becoming increasingly widespread in America right now, and it demonstrates not only how the Democratic party has driven voters to Trump in recent years, but also encapsulates how the left has been complicit in polarization.

It has become almost cliché to talk about how polarized our country is right now. People on the left and the right increasingly follow different media, believe different facts and even live in different places. According to YouGov polling, fewer Americans of either party have friends with differing political views than just eight years ago. Politics has become an all-consuming identity that destroys relationships, and nearly every aspect of our society is being divided along political lines.

This is bad for democracy. If people refuse to live near or have relationships with those across the political divide, it becomes increasingly difficult to have respectful conversations with people we disagree with, and changing minds becomes almost impossible. As Lincoln’s own AP Gov teacher Ms. O’Hearn put it, “If you can’t have a dialogue with each other, then that directly harms democracy”.

With how crazy the right seems to many of us, it can be easy to feel like this is all the fault of the other side. However, the left is very much at fault too; and unfortunately, Lincoln is a perfect example of this polarization. Our school is the epitome of the liberal bubble, a place where very few conservative people exist, and those that are here are afraid to share and discuss their beliefs in public.

In interviews with numerous students around the school, I found that the same theme came up repeatedly: in classrooms where the teacher clearly sides with the left, and a majority of students do as well, there is little room to share an opposing perspective, think critically about the accepted opinion or engage in debate about what is being taught. Students said they would feel “ostracized” and “not safe” if they were to share a conservative viewpoint in class.

This feeling was present not only in classes like AP Gov in which the election is discussed directly, but also in classes seemingly unrelated to politics like math and LA. Whether it’s a conversation about Kamala Harris or a lesson from the “Anti-racist APUSH” curriculum, the students I interviewed said that “it’s encouraged to just agree with what they say and move on”. Students don’t want to speak up or question the teacher because they don’t want to be seen as “racist”.

With practically zero voices from the right heard in school, Lincoln students are bombarded constantly with fairly uniform left-wing ideology. This cacophony of Democratic voices is the wall of the bubble we’re trapped in, and it breeds the hateful feeling expressed in that Instagram post.

The strength of our bubble makes it easy to look down on people outside of it. It’s easy to see the working people who vote for a billionaire whose policies benefit other billionaires as idiots. It’s easy to see the people who vote for a rapist who is responsible for the fall of Roe vs. Wade as sexist. It’s easy to see the people who vote for a man who says immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” as racist.

But this isn’t productive. When we tell people that if they vote for Trump, they’re a racist and we never want to talk to them again, that’s it. Friendship? Over. Dialogue? Finished. Hope of winning them over? Gone. It’s pretty hard to convince someone to support your ideas after telling them you think they’re racist.

Regardless, do we honestly think that 45% of female voters are really sexist? Are 16% of Black and 42% of Latino voters really racist?

Probably not. If nearly half of Latinos decide that Trump’s policies are agreeable to them, can a bunch of (mostly white) Democrats really tell them that they’re racist for voting for him? I don’t think we can.

So instead of casting Trump supporters out, let’s try, just for a moment, to do something hard. Let’s stop dismissing Trump voters as bigots and ask why they vote for him.

People vote based on different issues. Some people care most about democracy, some abortion, some crime. But many people vote only based on their personal financial situation, which makes sense, since it’s what affects them the most. Lots of Americans voted for Trump in spite of the problematic things he says because other issues matter more to them. According to exit polling reported by NBC, Trump won 81% of the vote among Americans who said they were worse off economically than four years ago. This group made up 46% of the electorate, compared to 24% who said they were better off, and Trump’s advantage here was key to his win.

There’s also the troubling prospect that many people may vote for Trump not in spite of his problematic statements and actions, but rather because of them. Many Americans don’t like “cancel culture”, and they feel shunned by a Democratic Party that calls them hateful and doesn’t appear to want them. They may not be actively racist, but merely uncomfortable with progressive orthodoxy, and tired of being called a xenophobe whenever they question the latest update on what is politically correct to say.

After such a decisive election loss, Democrats can’t afford to keep pushing people away, and in our divided country, Lincoln can’t keep contributing to polarization. We’ve been failing as a school to have real discussions, to think critically as we claim to want, and to hear voices from outside of our bubble.

Polarization isn’t just some inevitable thing that happens, it’s made up of thousands of actions and decisions made by all of us every day. Whether you’re a student, teacher or administrator, there are simple steps you can take to fight it. Include a new voice in your lesson, use a different news source to research your project or step up and question a lesson if you don’t agree with it or understand it.

If someone says something you see as offensive, refrain from calling them names or shutting them out, and instead try and find a way to understand them and explain to them what was problematic about what they said. Don’t call them out, call them in.

Because Lincoln is pushing people away. There’s a significant gap between what students feel comfortable saying in class, and the way they talk with their friends. Many students, young men especially, remain comfortable using slurs around their friends. One student said, “I constantly hear people making really stupid, bigoted jokes here.” There are many students who dislike the DEI curriculum and criticize it with their friends but would never question it in class.

Don’t get me wrong, using racist/sexist slurs is inappropriate, and hate-speech should never be allowed in classrooms, but with the current lack of dialogue at Lincoln, we’re failing to reach students with different opinions and call them in.

America is exceptionally divided, and polarization is bigger than any of us, but it’s not just caused by people in politics or “crazy Trumpers” in red states. It’s time that liberals at Lincoln and everywhere own up to our complicity and start to make a change, because in reality, it’s our fault, too.