To say that the past 100 days transformed the trajectory of American history would be a gross understatement.
Our generation has experienced significant upheavals merely in the past few years: the desolation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing threats against elected officials and the rollback of legal precedents, ranging from abortion rights to long-standing environmental regulations. From an attempted assassination against a former president to the potential ascension of America’s first female president, it is obvious that we are living in unprecedented times.
Residing in Washington, D.C. for the past eight months reinforced how extraordinary our times are. Forces of extremism, division and disillusionment are threatening to disintegrate the common bonds of compassion and pragmatic policymaking that bind us together. During the spring and summer, I interned for two national security think tanks focusing on counterterrorism policy, particularly relating to the ascendency of extremist organizations like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. Throughout the legal and policy work I conducted, I increasingly noticed how seemingly ordinary people could be radicalized into channeling their resentments into violence. Loving parents, children, immigrants, lawyers and veterans alike yielded to the forces of intolerance that inflamed their insecurities and upended their lives, motivating them to threaten lawmakers and commit politically motivated violence.
My work simultaneously aggravated and humbled me. We often tell ourselves that we’re above hate, that we’re too perceptive and conscientious to enable and promulgate the most vulgar and primitive resentments we collectively know are wrong. As an autistic person, I constantly confronted this base hatred growing up. It was all too common for me to be on the receiving end of derogatory slurs and discriminatory violence from my peers who predicated their actions on the same manifestations of ignorance we find ourselves confronting today.
Many people want to believe that what has transpired in other countries when extremism festers and plagues civic society cannot happen here. But this is wishful thinking: It can happen here. In fact, it already has.
What I ultimately took away from my time in Washington is that despite our country’s seemingly insurmountable partisanship, there is truly more that unites us than divides us. The information echo chambers and performative partisanship displayed in Capitol Hill are distractions from the real relationships and interactions we are fostering. Rather than taking the easy route by putting others down, we desire a politics that cherishes our democratic institutions, focuses on delivering tangible results and cares about the future we want to create for ourselves and for countless others who we don’t even know.
Disillusioned by the extremism and alienation that degrade our political system, we fight for a more pragmatic, compassionate and inclusive future that reflects not simply our values, but our democratic way of life. Our presidential election on Nov. 5 will be consequential in determining whether our democracy remains the envy of the world or backslides into the indiscriminate hate that has characterized so much of our 248-year national story.
But I know our generation knows better, and I am confident we will make the right decision in November and for decades to come.
