America, as it stands, is incredibly divided as a nation. It seems that liberals and Republicans find their hands gripping the others’ throats as tensions within the country rise. Our enemies and allies watch and find us barbaric. Our competitor and one of our biggest enemies, China, is starting to pull ahead and seems more primed to overtake us every day. Housing prices have made it incredibly hard for Millennials and Gen-Z to start homes or families. The cost of basic goods has been on the rise since before Biden, and they’re only growing higher. Where we are now is a crossroads. All of us, especially our legislative officials, are blinded, and can only perceive two paths in front of them: left and right. However, there is a path that we can talk about that’ll save us all, and it’s the path through the center.
The House of Representatives and the Senate are nearly the most divided they have ever been. Within the House, there are 435 members at any given time. Currently, there are 218 Republicans and 215 Democrats in the House, with two vacancies as House members Matt Gaetz and Michael Waltz resigned. In the Senate, the odds are a little less divided. Of the 100 senators, 53 are Republican, 43 are Democratic, and two are third parties. Percentage-wise, the House is divided 50.11% to 49.42% (not including the vacant seats), and the Senate is divided 53% to 45% (not including the third-party senators). If you’re wondering why I bring these numbers up, I use them to showcase the divide in our country. While the Republican party holds a majority in all three areas of the legislative process, those being the House, the Senate, and the President, there’s still a massive divide between the nation and its representatives. This is the most polar our country has been since the Civil War.
Under the Constitution, our country was founded on the idea that those in power must strike a balance between their views and others to create a more fair and perfect world for us to live in. I don’t just say that to sound grandiose. Without the Great Compromise that took both the Virginia Plan, to have a legislative body made up by population, and the New Jersey Plan, to have a legislative body made by an equal number of representatives, and made the House and the Senate from them, our country would not exist. Without strangers banding together across all 13 colonies banding together with the idea that they would fight for freedom even at the cost of their own lives, our country would not exist. To further my point, the last time our country couldn’t agree was the time when we lost the most people we’ve ever lost in battle, the Civil War.
I write this article as Helen of Troy, to you, my fellow students and fellow citizens of America, begging you, pleading with you to see where the path we’re on leads. After all, it was our first founding father and leader during the Revolutionary War who said, “However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterward the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” If our representatives and our nation cannot learn to compromise, I shudder at the thought of the grave consequences that will hold.
