A playground fight is beginning to take shape in legislation, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the impeachment trial, President Donald Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden or his son Hunter. It’s strange, right? Maybe even a bit refreshing.
You wouldn’t know it if you pay attention to the national media, but there are actually other things going on in the world other than the impeachment trial, which just needs to get over itself already.
This playground fight seems a bit comical at first, but it’s one that is part of a bigger issue in the United States that seems to be becoming sicker and sicker to witness by the day.
In 2016, California began its blacklist, or travel ban as the Golden State calls it, of not allowing any state-funded travel to particular states with what it deems to be anti-LGBTQ rights laws. It began with Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas and Mississippi and soon included Iowa and Oklahoma.
Not only did this include government officials, but it also includes students traveling to the states at state-run universities. That forced collegiate sports teams to have to turn to private funding to get around the restrictions.
It actually showed up with Southern Miss baseball a few years ago. It wasn’t California, but New York had placed a travel ban on Mississippi as well. The Golden Eagles were scheduled to play a three-game series against Stony Brook, a public university on Long Island with a great baseball program, in 2018, but New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive order got in the way.
Well in a comical rebuttal Thursday, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt announced an executive order banning all state-funded travel to, you guessed it, California. During a press conference, he said, “Enough is enough. If California’s elected officials don’t want public employees traveling to Oklahoma, I am eager to return the gesture on behalf of Oklahoma’s pro-life stance.”
This is eerily similar to something that also began to take center stage in 2016 during the presidential election. During my lifetime, although brief, I’ve never seen an election divide the people as much as that one did. The problem was the divide affected a lot of people’s everyday lives.
I don’t know who started the crazy idea, but a lot of Americans decided it would be best to draw a line in the sand. I’m sure you all remember that line, enhanced tenfold over social media: If you’re a supporter of (fill in the blank of whichever presidential candidate I don’t support), then get off my page. People were seriously ending lifelong friendships over political leanings.
Even to this day, I know people who won’t talk to former friends just because they supported Trump or Clinton. I can understand the connecting the dots of realizing you have a friend who doesn’t share the same core values as you, but if you only surround yourself with likeminded people you’re going to become quite narrow-minded yourself.
What’s even crazier to me is I know people who won’t watch movies with particular actors in them because the actor shared their political beliefs publicly. Or, for example, all the lifelong “Yeezus” fans who abandoned Kanye West when he revealed he was a Republican who supported Trump. He was absolutely roasted, accused of betraying his race and called an “Uncle Tom.”
I can somewhat comprehend the rationale behind it, but it’s quite silly and juvenile to me. Just because you don’t see eye to eye with someone doesn’t mean you have to cut ties with them completely. We should be able to accept one another for who we are rather than condemn each other for daring to be different. And turning to petty rebuttals, like Stitt’s, is nothing more than playground nonsense. It’s time to grow up.
Joshua Campbell is sports editor of The Columbian-Progress. Reach him via email at joshuacampbell@columbianprogress.com.
