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Political Debates

561 Words3 Pages

In Ruben Navarrette’s opinion piece for the USA Today, “Don’t be a 100 percent-er”, she discusses the partisanship involved in two major American political issues, guns and abortion. The beliefs of most people of these two political debates mostly coincide with their political party, with Democrats being on the side for gun control and be pro-choice, while Republicans being on the side of less gun control and be pro-life. Navarrette argues that this partisanship, these contrasting views with no grey in between, is fracturing the country, and politics is not about absolutes. She goes on to describe that there are people in the United States, including the author herself, that have beliefs in this grey area, and that going more to the fringes …show more content…

She describes that today’s “...political debates and policy discussions are largely devoid of anything that isn’t black-or-white.” (Navarrette) The author shares how she is pro-choice and for defunding Planned Parenthood, as well as for the Second Amendment, but for gun control (Navarrette). Navarrette goes into detail about how having these seemingly contradicting beliefs is nowhere present in American political culture, yet she, and probably many more Americans, share these ideas. However, one key piece that she fails to state in her column is other people’s beliefs that can seem to be contradictory in America. If Navarrette does include others’ perspectives which do fall in the grey area between the fringes, then her argument would have more strength, making it appear that large amounts of Americans do not fully share the ideas that both major political parties have. By only sharing her political beliefs about these two issues, Navarrette merely writes an article about what she feels about partisanship and theses issues, not about how a large number of the country feels about the very same

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