When I began writing this column several years ago, I promised myself to never promote any political or religious agenda. I’m holding true to that promise.

I have found, however, a troubling discontent about political party allegiance from Washington, D.C., and all the way to our neighborhoods and the division it’s causing in our country. I’m concerned about what will happen if this divide becomes wider. Here are some things I’m trying to figure out.

Help me understand why we use social media to condemn television media when in truth, Facebook and Twitter are forms of media doing the same thing. We are spreading the same political rhetoric on internet platforms that we dislike hearing on the TV news. Isn’t that what we call hypocrisy?

Help me understand what we expect to accomplish on social media by posting our political allegiance to either party or president, past or present. Don’t we realize that if what we want is what we get, we will still have a fractured country of half the people in America opposing our political views? Shouldn’t unity be the goal of all Americans? Don’t we remember telling our children you can’t always get what you want and now we adults are whining because, well, we can’t always get what we want.

Help me understand why we post what we believe are “facts” about any government official that can be disputed and often proven to be false. For example, when any president takes credit for lowering the unemployment rate, the percentage does not consider the underemployment rate. Millions of Americans have been forced to take on lower-paying jobs during difficult economic times just to be able to bring home a paycheck. A man with an engineering degree works as a clerk in a liquor store because engineering companies are downsizing and not hiring. Fox Business reports that 21.2 percent of American workers have either had their hours reduced or are making much less money than they were before. A low unemployment rate is not always an indicator of a thriving economy.

Help me understand why we believe a strong stock market indicates a thriving economy when as of June 2020, nearly 50 percent of Americans are struggling to pay their bills and do not invest in stocks because they don’t have surplus money. Barbara Friedberg from US News reports that a rising market, while reflecting numbers of investments in corporate businesses, does not reflect the state of the economy, which has been struggling since the pandemic began.

Help me understand why we want everything we buy made in America only to complain that a baseball cap made in China that costs $12 would cost $30 dollars if made by American workers who belong to a labor union that negotiates higher wages.

Help me understand why political differences cause relationships to break up. A Wakefield Research study reports that 29 percent of American relationships and marriages have felt increasing tension due to strong political disagreements and 22 percent of millennial relationships have broken up because of polarizing political views suggesting that a couple on a first date should discuss their party allegiance before they plan to have a second.

Help me understand why Christian groups support nonpracticing candidates who use religion only for political purposes to gain supporters.

Help me understand what we think we are teaching our children by ridiculing government officials on social media. We scold children when they make fun of other kids but then we go and do what we’ve told them not to do.

Help me understand why we have to have political parties at all. They have become the Hatfields and McCoys in the Senate and the House, feuding about everything, and now Americans have joined in fighting each other over their policy wars.

According to political analyst Steve Almond, only 10 percent of Americans in the 1950s had negative feelings toward the opposing party. “That number now stands at 90 percent,” says Almond. He asks us to imagine a country with no Republican or Democrat parties. Almond says the American people would then have to vote the candidate and not the party. On topics of gun control and health care, voters would not immediately know the candidate’s position on these topics due to their party affiliation. They’d actually have to listen to the candidate’s views and vote for or against the person and not the party. No blue states. No red states. Just the United States.

Help me understand why some still believe that the deaths of nearly half a million Americans to the coronavirus is a fake number made up by state and national governments to control us through fear.

Help me understand why the color of a person’s skin or the culture they belong to should make one human being superior to another human being.

Help me understand why we keep trusting the face in the White House to make America a great country instead of trusting the face we see every day in the mirror.

Help me understand why so many people in this country are stubbornly narrow-minded. Austrian neurologist Viktor Frankl said, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com.