Some nights you drive by a car accident and the almost blinding sirens blast your retinas. It’s hard to focus away from their enticing lights. Red, blue, red, blue over and over again. Almost hypnotic, you think to yourself. The embrace of red and blue in almost perfect synchronicity, when something is so balanced, it’s hard not to join their binary influence. But you carry on, you look away and you keep driving. You move on from the energetic comfort of binary colors, and accept things as they are.

If it hasn’t already occurred to you, I’m talking about our political system. Sometimes it’s almost blinding with the opinions, all the people, all the conflict, ideas, systems, beliefs, I could go on for days. But you all know what I mean. Turn on the TV, look at your neighbors yard, scroll on your phone, look at billboards. It follows you everywhere you go.

The messages all share the beliefs of one of two agendas. It either leans left or right. The right serves the Republican party, The left serves the Democratic party. The two parties are split on several issues, including but not limited to: abortion, energy, social and economic issues, etc. The information wars grow stronger as the general election of 2024 grows near. The passion, and maybe even hatred, only increases. 

As big issues grow closer, like the election, it’s as if sirens go off in the media, the government, and worse, in the psyche of the American people. It seems like in the blink of an eye, off goes the alarms, red, blue, red, blue. Information, slander, conflict, and even sometimes, violence. You ask yourself, should you pick a side? Are you a Democrat? You probably consume a lot of social media. Maybe you’re a Republican? I’d guess you are religious, or maybe you don’t like progressive policies. Maybe you’re in the middle, or you don’t like the boldness of having an opinion. 

Or maybe your only opinion is your hatred of the ignorance of others. Maybe you see things in a way you think nobody else does. Maybe you think you should stand up, but you don’t quite know how. Maybe you can see where someone is coming from, even when their experience is different from your own. Maybe you can understand the reasoning behind those you don’t always see eye to eye with. Maybe you want people to open up to the other side of things. 

Does that resonate with you? Maybe the siren doesn’t have to be red and blue. If we can all see with naked eyes, and an open heart and mind. Maybe we can see the white light between the colors. Maybe, Just maybe, the sirens don’t define the noise at all.