Last Wednesday, I attended the Rose Cafe led by Professor Peter Enns, where we discussed recent political events. I found the discussion to be very informative and interesting. One aspect of the conversation that especially interested me was the need for people to separate their opinion on a subject from their belief on whether or not a particular method used to achieve a goal is acceptable. In the discussion, Professor Enns used the example that the Republicans in Congress decided to confirm Betsy DeVos before Jeff Sessions so that he could vote for her. Professor Enns said that he initially felt annoyed about the tactic, believing that it was an unfair practice. However, he realized that if it had been the Democrats who had done a similar tactic in order to stop Betsy DeVos’s confirmation, he would have believed that it was a good idea. This showed that he was not really against the tactic. Instead, he was just against the confirmation.

I really feel like this issue is something we all deal with, and it would be helpful for us all to try to recognize, regardless of our political beliefs. For instance, one personal issue I have with Trump supporters recently is that, although they were strongly against scandalous behavior during the campaign (i.e. Clinton’s emails), they do not seem to care about the scandals already affecting the Trump administration. In fact, they tend to believe that these scandals do not matter. It appears that this may be due to the fact that they support Trump, regardless of what he does. However, by not realizing the hypocrisy of their support–by not realizing that they have fallen into a similar line of thinking as Professor Enns–it makes it harder for others to take them seriously and have actual productive conversations with them.