Political intolerance has woven its way through history, and now it is heavily present online.
According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the term “political intolerance” refers to the unwillingness to extend basic rights and civil liberties to individuals or groups who hold different political views. Often stemming from perceived threats to one’s beliefs, values, or identity, it can lead to distrust and outright refusal to engage with certain people. In many cases, political intolerance opens the flood gates to dehumanization, which makes it easier to justify harmful actions towards certain people. Social media gives people an opportunity to express their values and opinions to people all around the world. Because of this, political intolerance finds a broader reach on the Internet.
“We have to be open to other people’s opinions,” civics teacher Sean Murphy said. “It’s your First Amendment guaranteed right to have free speech, but do it in a way that’s going to benefit people, not cause issue or problem.”
Camp Mystic is a private Christian summer camp for girls located in Kerr County, Texas near the Guadalupe River and was directly affected by the floods on July 4. Campers and counselors were unaware of the danger when storms started and water rapidly rose in the early morning. The campers were evacuated by counselors and staff after water began to overtake cabins. At least 27 young campers and teenage counselors were found dead and one girl has still not been found. This tragedy has been extremely politicized online, becoming yet another example of American society’s political intolerance.
Commenters blamed the deaths of the children on their parents voting to cut funding to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and National Weather Service (NWS).
As one commenter wrote on Threads, “They need a taste of their own medicine to see what voting to dismantle FEMA and NWS does.”
The National Weather Service issued their first Flash Flood Watch at around 1:00 in the afternoon on July 3. The second and most dire alerts for flash floods went off at 1:14 a.m. on July 4th, which many say they never got. According to CNN, counselors at Camp Mystic were also told to turn in their phones, which contributed to the unawareness of and unpreparedness for the floods.
“A natural disaster doesn’t happen depending on your political affiliation,” sophomore Knox Bossert said. “There’s no reason to attack someone over the tragedy of losing their child because of whether you identify as a Republican or a Democrat.”
In three years, many of today’s teens will be able to vote for the 48th President of the United States. Our generation needs to make changes to the way we do politics in order to help make the world a better place for ourselves and generations to come, and avoid other politically intolerant situations like this.
“It’s good to be educated,” sophomore Lennon Johnson said. “But if [kids] are talking about politics, they should have more of an open mind, because they still have time before they can vote.”
Making sure facts are accurate is important when making judgements on certain events as well.
“There’s biases between all news networks, some lean left, some lean right; same thing on social media,” Bossert said. “So the best thing is to just see the raw, unbiased facts of what’s going on and then that gives you the best way to go about your decision of who you vote for, who you want to vote for; who you agree with and who you disagree with.”
An article by Stanford University suggests negative emotions are what feeds intolerance. They propose that the way to reduce political tensions is actually quite simple, take a detached perspective. To take a detached perspective means stepping back from an issue to be unconnected emotionally or intellectually, which can dampen bad feelings and increase tolerance for different sides. Disconnecting from personal feelings relating to the person’s beliefs can make it easier to show empathy for the person themself.
“A tragedy is a tragedy, and a death is a death,” Bossert said. “It doesn’t matter who you voted for.”
