I've heard this phrase tossed around a lot. "Liberal Snowflake" is the new insult used against anyone opposing Donald Trump. Also used are "Cry Baby" and "Bleeding Heart Liberal". What I find truly astounding about these insults, is not just that they're immature, but that they're blatantly implying that compassion is a weakness. One thing I wish all Trump supporters would understand, is that the protests that are happening have nothing to do with losing and everything to do with compassion. Criticizing Donald Trump does not mean you have to support Barack Obama and it does not mean you have to support Hilary Clinton. What it means, is that you will not be a blind follower and you will not be a belligerent person. We are not at war with one another. This isn't football. You don't pick a team then support and defend that team no matter what they choose to do. America is not the president, the senate, or the local government. People are America. America is comprised of so many people from so many diverse backgrounds, yet the people who are in the majority do one of three things. They fear the people who are in the minority because they are different, or they stay silent because it does not effect them personally. Finally, there are the people who are also in the majority but will not tolerate bullying others out of a misguided sense of fear. These are the "Liberal Snow Flakes". These are the people who march in the streets holding signs, because no you cannot ridicule our friends and expect there to be no repercussions.

It is not okay to mock a disabled man. It is not okay to promote sexual assault. It is not okay to destroy the sacred land of Native Americans. It is not okay to label someone a terrorist for their religion. It is not okay to turn away children seeking refuge from war. The people protesting these actions do not care if the decisions were made by Obama, Trump, or the Pope. They care about the people who will be hurt by our government's choices, and you should too. You should care that you defended a man after he mocked someone's disability. You should not belittle the disabled individuals who were hurt by that. You should care about the young women who have been sexually assaulted in some way. Young women who have been scarred for life. You should not mock them for needing therapy, after half our nation supported a man who said on tape that sexual assault was okay. You should care that the meager amount of land Native American's have left, after our ancestors raped and massacred them, is now under attack. You should care that Flint, Michigan does not have clean drinking water. You should care that we bombed Middle Eastern countries then turned away the children seeking refuge from the war. This is called critical thinking. It means you can think about these choices and see they're wrong no matter who chose to carry them out.

I can tell you this for two reasons. One, I've been there. I know what it's like to fear people because you don't understand them. When I was young, some of the adults in my life passed their fear onto me. They did not know. They did not understand. They did not seek out answers. They taught me to beware. When I was young, I used to think that anyone who wasn't a straight Christian was bad. That's all I knew. I grew up in a small town with a bunch of elderly people who attended church every Sunday. That's what they told me. That's what I believed. Then I got older and I started learning. I took classes to learn about people. I wanted to understand why there was so much bad in the world. My history and science classes made be start to question things. They made me wonder if I was right about people and about the world around me.

In my eleventh grade year of high school, I started doing dual enrollment at Penn State. I took classes in order to get college credits, but I received so much more than that. Things started to make sense as I took courses and met new people. The psychology courses taught me about human error. They taught me about things like stereotypes. I learned that there weren't as many bad people as I thought there were. I started researching on my own. Learned about how inaccurate many of my "facts" were. I found out that the world seemed so bad to me when I was young, simply because I didn't understand it. I stereotyped people because I'd never actually interacted with them in real life. I'd only heard the bad side of people I had never met before.

I changed my point of view because I learned through research and human interaction that I was wrong. After high school, I decided to chose a college that would help me become more diverse in my understanding of others. Through Penn State and Washington and Jefferson, I've made friends with people from different ethnic backgrounds, religions, and sexual orientations. I'm taking classes on the Chinese culture because I want to known more. I'm still taking classes in Psychology because I want to know my own mistakes. I no longer fear anyone because now I understand them. I will continue to seek out answers because I no longer want to make the assumption that I am right. That's what Psychologists call confirmation bias. I thought my beliefs were right when I was young because everyone around me told me they were. I never tried to be proven wrong. Simply put, I thought I was right because I told myself I was. I've shared this new understanding with some of the people in my life. Some people, like my parents, opened up to the notion. They listened to me and started seeing things from other perspectives. Some people I care about did not. I don't hate these people. I don't want to fight these people. I love these people and I feel sorry for them because they still do not understand, and I fear they never will. They never will see how many beautiful people there are in the world, simply because they will not allow themselves to be proven wrong.

Secondly, I can say this because I criticize every politician no matter what their political party is. I supported the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters when President Obama was the one being protested against. I disagreed with Obama on certain things and I was not afraid to make that known. To me and many other people, the person making the decisions does not matter. What matters is the detrimental effects those decisions will have, and the people that will be hurt in the process. It's not about party affiliation. It's not about winning or losing. It's not about boosting your ego by proving yourself right. It's about caring. It's about seeing right and wrong no matter the source. Call me a "Liberal Snowflake". I don't care, because to me compassion and understanding will never be a weakness.