Last Tuesday, America woke up and saw her shadow.

For the last decade, America has been plagued by division and polarization. We call each other names, accuse those who dare oppose us of treason, and label one another as evil. The result? The general election of Nov. 5, 2024.

The first election I can remember is that of Barack Obama in 2008. As young as I was, I remember looking on in admiration when Sen. John McCain refused to use the prejudice of the few to get an edge against Obama and praised him as a patriot with whom he happened to have ideological disagreements. To my Gen-Z and Millennial peers, this is a reminder that politics doesn’t have to be the way that it is today.

This year, I cast my first ever general election ballot. For nearly half of my life, Donald Trump has been top of mind and at the center of nearly every political conversation between TV’s talking heads. Trump, who has run all three of his campaigns on a platform of negativity and fear, was often met with a response in-kind. Democrats and left-leaning pundits berated him constantly and certainly will continue to do so for the duration of his next term.

Let me be clear, I am not defending Trump against the negative press that follows him, nor am I justifying his often unsettling rhetoric. The things he says and the way that he says them are intended to startle and arouse. The problem is that we are taking the bait — on the right and the left.

Despite what you might see on social media, telling your opponents that they are stupid and wrong is not going to change their minds. The result will be just the opposite; they will dig in and respond to your insults with insults of their own. Bullying begets bullying.

It has been a tactic of the left for nearly all of modern American political memory to talk down to conservatives, whom the generally younger, college-educated left see as uninformed, uneducated and unworthy of an opinion. This culture, which Jonathan Haidt referred to as “safetyism” in “The Coddling of the American Mind,” has become especially pervasive on college campuses, where Gen-Z students have come to view all opposition, however nuanced, as intolerably discomforting and deserving of censure.

This type of mindset has been a recipe for disaster, and that is exactly what the American political system cooked up in 2016. Many on the left ascribed Trump’s 2016 victory to racial resentment in the wake of Obama’s eight years in office; however, this take had the unintended effect of alienating people who might otherwise have been swayed by Democratic social positions. Instead, they were forced into defensive conservatism.

So, to my fellow citizens who might be disappointed with the results of this election, I present to you a challenge: Take this as an opportunity to reach out to that friend or relative with whom you disagree about the outcome of this election, and talk to them. Listen to understand, and respond in a way that shows them that you are talking with them, and not at them.

I know this may seem like a difficult proposition; you, like me, are probably upset, and it may be easier to retreat from the hard conversations. It may feel validating to block on Instagram all of your high school friends who posted “Daddy’s Home” when learning of the results. It may feel clever to call your under-informed uncle names at the Thanksgiving dinner table. The consequence of that, however, will be an inescapable cycle of retaliation. “They elected him, so we have to get back at them because we are better,” simply isn’t going to work. If we continue down this path, we will be right back here in four years.

America is exhausted. She is cold and tired from a decade-long political winter, suffering a blizzard of divisiveness, fear and hatred. Perhaps it’s about time we changed our national figure; dethrone the bald eagle in favor of our beloved groundhog Punxsutawney Phil. Every four years for the last decade, America has emerged from the shadows and chosen to remain in the cold, rather than to see the sun of spring. Albert Einstein once said, “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” If America wants the political season to change, we must seek to understand rather than subdue one another.

Charles Kay (cwkay26@gmail.com) is a student of public policy and rhetoric at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is a resident of Glen Arm in Baltimore County.