Red and Blue

This week I was watching the trailer for a documentary featuring the “Purple” state of mind, which reflects a mix of the Red and Blue extreme political sides. The author of the documentary emphasizes that instead of becoming defensive and identifying just with one side or the other, we should encourage open debate and discussion among our differences. He would approach all different members of society to get their perspective, which resulted in a lot of agreement and strong disagreement.

Watching the two strong opposing extremes, I began to realize the importance of politics in American culture. Before, politics were a means of understanding government authority, control, and participation within society.

But now you can determine almost everything about a person by which side they affiliate themselves with. If you are conservative, you hate MTV because it encourages a sexual, immoral society; you attend a large, evangelical church every Sunday religiously; you send your money to government funds instead of humanitarian aid. If you are democratic, you only buy organic; you listen to alternative music because everything else is just crap; you ride your bike, and refuse to drive an SUV.

Despite these very stereotypical associations, we have all experienced such bias. We encourage this “Purple” state of mind, yet we can never fully get ourselves past the royal blue and deep red. Not only is our political affiliation apart of what we think, but it becomes part of who we are.

Not only are we American, but we are now an extremely conservative American, a very liberal American. Can purple ever fully be achieved?