Opinion: A nation divide might not need to stand

Immediately following the election, calls for unity were everywhere, coming from a lot of people. The president, the president-elect, Hillary Clinton and others on all political sides talked about the healing process.

It became a popular way to say “I dislike the results, but I respect the process.” While that sentiment is fine, it doesn’t really have any merit when our society remains deeply divided despite the election's conclusion. Unity has become a buzzword. Let’s stop it.

Thankfully, these calls for unification have waned since, and rightfully so. Unification without any change is only surface level. Acting like we all get along when we clearly do not only allows our problems to go unnoticed and grow under the surface.

It is true that some people sincerely are calling for unity as a way to stay off any potential violence erupting from political anger. We appreciate these people wanting to keep all Americans safe, but there are larger implications.

If your sincerely held beliefs go against those of a political leader, stand firm regardless of whether it is divisive or not. Divisiveness often gets a bad rap, but it is the natural way in which people figure out better solutions. Division breeds disagreements, which lead to debate.

Most people think open debate is a positive thing.

Hiding behind nice slogans does nothing to solve the underlying issues and can cause the divisions to grow. Once these issues get out of hand, they can bubble up and lead to an outright civil war.

If unity leads to you hiding your beliefs, then resist calls to unify and continue to voice your opinion. Ignoring issues or people is not sustainable and can lead to much larger societal issues.

One could argue that the United States is past a point of acceptable divisiveness, and that is a legitimate argument. But even then, if unification comes at the cost of morality, is it worth pursuing? It seems most people would say no — including those so adamantly wanting the people to unify in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump.

Many of the Republican leaders making these calls now do not have a good legacy of uniting when faced with political differences.

The past eight years of the Obama administration show that the conservative party was not willing to unify at the cost of morality. They increased divisiveness, even leading to government shutdown. Those same people are telling moderate Republicans and Democrats to come together.

And now the Democrats, who were calling for unity in 2008, are generally those acting in opposition to the rise of Trump. This is not a debate of whether the Republicans were in the right or wrong — both sides are looking somewhat hypocritical in these calls for unity.

This just goes to show that calls for unity are more like calls for political silencing or keeping dissenting opinions from growing. They ought to be resisted. If we sacrifice discourse, regardless of which political side it critiques, we are going to have larger problems than division.

This is not a call for disrespectful discourse, name calling or yelling. It is a call for honesty.

If you do not believe in the ideas or policies of a certain person, you have no obligation to unify with them. You are well within your right to oppose them.

Please be respectful about it, but don’t needlessly give in to someone in the spirit of unification. You are probably being divisive, but that might be just what we need right now.