It’s widely acknowledged that the Vice Presidential debate is an undercard fight—a chance for VP candidates to clean up their running mates’ messes and snag a few soundbites for future campaigns. But there’s one key point we should all take away from Oct 1’s debate: humility. In an era where our every word and action is recorded in the annals of the internet, we should show grace to people who have made mistakes and owned them.
Over the course of the 90-plus minute debate, both candidates were asked about past gaffes. Tim Walz responded to his false claim of being in China during the Tiananmen Square riots of 1989 by admitting “I’m a knucklehead sometimes.” When Vance was asked about his changing views on his own running mate, he said, “I was wrong,” and tactfully called for honesty in the public sphere.
Throughout the debate, each candidate treated the other with respect and professionalism. Young people especially should take their cues from these men and learn to treat their opponents with grace.
Virtually everyone in public life has shifted their views at one point or another. It’s inevitable. Donald Trump was once a Democrat. Barack Obama famously advocated against gay marriage before radically changing his stance. If you’re around long enough, and you talk enough, you’re bound to contradict yourself. This has been true forever—the only difference today is that the internet has the receipts. And the consequences for our political discourse have been catastrophic.
Young people are now terrified to make their beliefs known. Speaking out could make it harder down the line for them to get a job or get into school. Even slight deviation from the constantly shifting goalposts has ruined more than a few lives. My generation has been cowed by political correctness.
And our national discourse suffers. Are we better off when we are so afraid of being wrong that we never dare to be right? That we never open ourselves up to criticism and opposing viewpoints, the chance to educate and be educated?
Politicians aren’t helping this climate. Instead of changing their minds, they typically dig in, doubling and tripling down on indefensible positions. Instead of simply saying “You’re right, I got that wrong,” they lie, twist their own words, and the public loses confidence in them because of it.
The hyperbolic rhetoric of the last decade has created this hostile environment.
When young people say they’re a Republican, their friends immediately assume they’re “racist” or “fascist.” When they say they’re a Democrat, peers might jump to the conclusion that they’re “socialist” or “communist.” But the truth is, the overwhelming majority of us are none of these things.
Assuming the worst of our opponents has led us down a dark path. The only solution is to break that mindset.
I challenge Americans, and especially young Americans, to assume the best in those we discuss politics with. Don’t crucify people for past lapses in judgment. Don’t cancel them for an off-color tweet from 2012. Accept their explanation with grace and the recognition that to err is to be human.
In fact, every great human who ever lived had their flaws. The great but deeply flawed Winston Churchill once said, “To improve is to change, to be perfect is to change often.” Keep that in mind next time you’re afraid to speak your mind.
Once we do this, we can get back to free speech the way our founders would’ve wanted. We can discuss ideas abstractly, propose wild ideas, and bounce them off of one another. America itself was once a wild idea in the heads of a few colonials on the edge of the world. Rather than treating one another with dismissal and condescension, let’s treat each other with grace.
Generation Z in particular can make this change. We’re young enough that our ideas about the world are still forming. We should be constantly learning, open-minded, and curious. If we immediately assume that someone who disagrees with us on, say, the war in the Middle East is either a “terrorist” or a “genocidal Zionist,” we will never be united again.
Instead, let’s keep in mind what we have in common. If you talk politics with someone, also talk football, Netflix shows, or the last concert you went to. Find something you have in common, and assume that they’re wrong, yes, but generally good. Never lose a friend over politics—I never have.
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