“I hate everything about you
Why do I love you?
You hate everything about me
Why do you love me?”
“I Hate Everything About You” — Three Days Grace

The debut single for Three Days Grace off the group’s self-titled debut album, “I Hate Everything About You” was released in 2003 and quickly jumped onto music charts, reaching the top of Canadian rock charts, the top five in U.S. rock charts, and peaking at No. 55 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Though the group had songs that reached higher marks on the rock charts and Hot 100, the song’s longevity has been unmatched for the group, as the song would spend 45 weeks on the modern rock chart and 46 weeks on the mainstream rock chart.

The lyrics are quite basic, with a downbeat emphasis in crescendoed guitar and vocal moments within the song that provide their own hook to pull the listener forward.

The lyrics and seeming battle musically within the song emphasize the point of the words written by lead singer Adam Gontier about love-hate relationships.

Gontier laughed about how direct the song’s meaning truly is, saying, “The song is pretty blunt you know? It’s to the point.”

Many currently feel that our daily news cycle is filled with blunt and “to the point” reminders of just how divided we are as a country and as a society.

Popular news entertainment channels and websites such as Fox News and MSNBC would have you believe that those who have differing political ideologies cannot even stand to be in the same room with one another.

When a would-be assassin fired a bullet at former President Donald Trump, the predominant rhetoric was that it was simply a sign of how forcefully divided we’ve become that rather than talking through disagreements, violence, and even potentially fatal violence, was seen as a legitimate option.

But...what if it’s not all true?

What if you and I, whether we’re red or blue or various shades of purple in our political thoughts, are significantly more the same than we are different…but it’s not in the best interest of many people out there to emphasize that?

Polling by the Associated Press earlier this year showed that the significant majority of all respondents, across political lines, agreed on the fundamental rights of being an American, with more than 80% of those polled naming the right of equal protection under the law, the right to vote, freedom of speech, the right to privacy, freedom of religion, and the right to peacefully assemble as core rights in the country.

While work done by the Pew Research Center has shown that the median Democrat has moved left over the last 30 years and the median Republican has moved farther to the right over the last 30 years, the reasons behind that move have been highly theorized without a lot of definitive polling behind any one issue.

I’d like to go out on a limb and suggest that a lack of ability to simply speak with someone of opposing viewpoints is a huge part of the issue.

In 2020, a collection of Huron area folks did a Zoom call with the Harwood Institute, discussing division present in the country as we headed toward that fall’s elections and dealt with life during a pandemic. What was revealed is that on the significant majority of issues, people agreed.

Recently, my family took a trip to the Black Hills and attended a family camp for a week. Part of the week included a Bible study, led by a professor from a seminary. She brought along her husband to the experience.

She introduced us, figuring my sports writing and his sports fandom would click, and it did. However, we had very long discussions regarding the political motives and direction of the country.

We certainly did not agree on everything, but we both left the conversation saying to one another, “I’ll have to look into that.”

It wasn’t a matter of trying to escape a difficult conversation or empty words, either. He approached me after the closing worship on the final day of camp and double-checked on a couple of things that I had said as he wanted to make sure to look them up once he got home.

One thing we both did agree upon was that spending our time online, consuming media, and even interacting in community with nothing but those who 100% agree with us actually hurts us as a nation. Being able to have difficult conversations allows for difficult decisions to be made.

When you can’t have those sorts of conversations, you end up with significant stalemates, such as we’ve seen in Congress over the last two years, where even getting the basic government funding bills is a monstrous chore, and we can’t come together to get a farm bill renewal.

One of the podcasts that I enjoy listening to is Congressional Dish, a podcast hosted by Jennifer Briney. Briney digs into the bills proposed to Congress and actually reads every page of them, summarizing the totality of the bills, along with hearings about those bills, for the podcast. She is intentionally not a member of either party, and anyone listening to her podcast is going to quickly find that she is much more concerned about ensuring we have a functioning country than seeing a particular side “win.”

Briney attended the Republican National Convention last month in Milwaukee, and she shared her experience on the podcast. One thing that stuck out to me in her description was just how nice and welcoming everyone on media row truly is — when the camera is off.

She shared a story on another platform about a host for a particularly one-sided website speaking with a fellow media attendee in a jovial and caring manner for nearly an hour. The host was called over by her network to begin her show, and once the camera turned on, she completely flipped a switch, now completely bashing the very identity group to which the person she’d just spent an hour talking with in such a caring way belonged, and referring to that group by terms that were obviously intended to draw clicks and views.

Briley’s observation was that so much of the rhetoric-driven, divisive, talking point left-right entertainment news media is completely acting, not genuine belief.

Heck, if you want proof that what is being spewed on your favorite one-sided media environment is truly baiting and not the real beliefs of the hosts, look into how many of those hosts have worked for channels and companies that are completely opposed to one another ideologically.

We are headed into a presidential election that is already bringing out social media memes and Tik Tok videos to question the intelligence of anyone who’d consider the other side of the aisle.

Realize that those sorts of things are getting all they’re intended to gain - views, follows, likes - essentially social media acknowledgment.

They’re not seeking truth, they’re not encouraging togetherness and unity, and they’re certainly not concerned with you; only your click or view to drive more money their way.

Don’t let someone else’s revenue generation be what decides your beliefs. As the passage in Matthew 7 says, when you build your house upon the sand…