“President Issues Appeal for Unity in State of Union” is the title of the first article on the New York Times for Wednesday, January 31st, the day after President Trump’s State of the Union speech.

I have no idea what speech they watched. I listened to the speech Tuesday night. I spent almost an hour and a half watching extremely different reactions from the crowd. I didn’t hear unity or see any evidence of hope for unity moving forward.

While I heard president Trump mention unity, which is great and very modest coming from him, the words seem empty. They weren’t Trump’s words, they were words from very talented speech-writers. If Trump would have gone off script and said something along the lines of “Stinky congress needs to do the work in a big, huge way,” I would have believed him. But in the case of this speech I think the reaction by Americans and Congress is more important.

Two sides of America heard two very different speeches last night. While I think everyone can agree the speech was presidential and can appreciate the efforts of the many citizens praised by President Trump, the emotions throughout the rest of the speech enlighten the different sides of America. One side heard a hope for American values in the flag, and another heard attacks at the fundamental of freedom. And that is only the different viewpoints of those who watched. There is also the guarantee (even though I only read the headlines) that the various sounding boards of professional and social media will replay only the soundbites that are applicable to their points.

To be fair, I’m not mad that people didn’t listen to the speech. I wouldn’t ask that on anyone. But what I do ask is that we start listening to each other. We have passed a time of polite discourse decades ago, but are now wading dangerously deep into a time in which there is no communication between sides. As polarization increases, few are friends with people with the opposite viewpoints. We as a country villainize the opposite side and compare them to their most monstrous representatives. This makes people defensive and retreat back into their world of agreement, and the country continue the polarizing cycle.

In this age of technology we have lost all appreciation of nuance. I think appreciating the complicated nature of the polarizing issues is the first step to any kind of unity. We can still pressure congress and be passionate, but we don’t have to approach every conversation about politics with average people on attack mode.

If Trump can even appear to put down his ego for a second, we as Americans need to not pretend we know everything. Here I’ll even go first *clears throat.*

I’m Erin Devine and I don’t understand a lot. I still tie my shoes the easy/toddler way and know very little about anything to do with Iraq.

Now that was easy wasn’t it?

Politics are difficult and personal. But it’s time to approach politics differently. Admit your shortcomings (if you need more examples, feel free to contact me), try to be nice, and maybe we can start putting back together the pieces of this divided nation. Or at least start to find the glue.