We Need to Talk: Why American Political Discourse in St Andrews is Vital

When Trump was first elected, I was ten years old.

I woke to the sound of my door slowly cracking open, my mother’s pained face illuminated only by the glow of my nightlight. I knew what had happened by her expression alone, but I hadn’t understood what it meant, not yet. To me, he was a humorous figure, a Halloween costume. Literally. I was Hillary Clinton, and my dog was Donald himself, a man to be mocked but not feared. Someone that would never be president.

When he was elected, I was too young to understand the implications. But even then, I felt a sense of dread, of foreboding, of waiting for something to happen.

It was not unlike how I felt during the 2024 election. The days leading up to November 5th, I’d felt hopeful, like maybe we’d get it right this time, like maybe something might go right in our American political landscape. But as the night had gone on, I’d felt my hope slowly curdle as we watched the screen in the McIntosh TV room turn increasingly red. I went to bed before they called it, but I knew what was going to be the outcome. We all did.

And just as it was when I was ten, America’s culture is suffering considerably. No longer are we united by shared values of freedom, love, and community. Instead, we are dominated by a cutthroat, us-vs-them mob mentality. Trump's first election was the start of a particular sickness in our country, and it has only gotten worse—warping into a plague of tribalism expedited by the rapid-fire speed of social media.

No longer can we look with compassion at those who disagree. No longer do political parties communicate in any way. As Jonathan Haidt argues in an Atlantic article, we have shattered the common community, a fragmentation that has led to division not only between political parties, but “within the left and within the right,” within institutions and even families.

Credit: Google Images

Why? Because we will not talk. We have lost the ability to do so. Sure, we might repost something on Instagram, or block our Trump-voting aunt on Facebook, or curse out someone in our tutorial, but we will not talk. We are afraid of bad-faith arguments or being cancelled. We avoid real conversation because actually talking means confronting issues that are so closely tied to our identity that facing disagreement threatens our very selves.  

That doesn’t only apply to individuals—even organisations themselves fear conversation, ousting anyone who raises an opinion that doesn’t directly line up with their ethos. This lack of inter-party (or inter-school, or intergroup, or interfamily) discourse increases radicalism and polarisation, pushing groups apart even more. And as politics get increasingly more heated, the sickness of hatred only spreads, even among places like St Andrews.

This hatred might seem justified, especially regarding issues that seem obvious to us. But this outlook created an eleven-year-old whose worldview was warped around an us-vs-them, whose-parents-voted-for-who mindset. A disease that made me abhor other people because surely anyone who disagreed with me deserved my hatred.

We cannot hate over 50% of our country. If we do, we have no country at all. And the only medicine for this sickness is discourse. We must be open to understanding the other side, even if we couldn’t imagine thinking the way they think. We must be able to have critical conversations within our own side, as it moves us towards reform. We must be able to show empathy even if we vehemently disagree, because empathy shouldn’t rely on agreement of opinion.

At St Andrews, we are uniquely placed in an environment that could be ideal for discourse. A thousand different perspectives, all in a place that is removed from the American political environment to some extent, we could make this the place we engage in meaningful conversations.

And I’ve seen it happen again and again—as a divinity student, my entire degree is literally arguing about issues that are inseparably fused to our identities. Talking about God and politics is my entire life, and before coming to St Andrews, I assumed that it would cause huge rifts within our cohort. But I have found that, even after arguing for hours, even after heated discussions in the infamous JCR that usually end with someone yelling about “submitting to the Catholic Church,” we walk out with a deep sense of understanding.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t still feel upset, or angry, or confused as to why different sides think different things. This does not mean that we should put up with political actions that go against what is legal and right. But what we have been doing hasn’t been working—it’s time to make a change. It’s time to lead with compassion, not anger. It’s time to ask questions, not shut down in the face of opposition.

American students, we need to talk.