During the first presidential debate this past Monday, the phrase “registrar para votarse” reached more than 100,000 searches on Google. If that scares you, it’s because you don’t know your neighbor.
You do not know the man who built your house, the woman who cooked your last meal or even the person who drove you home from the bars last night. I do not either.
This is called implicit bias, and it does not mean you are a bigot or a deliberate racist. All it means is that you have a limbic system. When you see someone with a different skin color, or someone who speaks a different language, or someone who believes in a different deity, there is a hunk of gray matter that screams, “Run!”
Evolutionarily, this makes plenty of sense, but it holds us back today. Ten thousand years ago, the “other” was a wooly mammoth. Now, it is your fellow man. America is almost hopelessly divided, and it is because of these implicit biases.
The hate and vitriol that define our political discourse is unprecedented in modern times. We are witnessing the total civic collapse of American society. There is only one thing that can really unite us: money. The pursuit of the cold, hard cash that leads to a life of prosperity will lead us out of our animalistic biases.
America was built on godless capitalism, and godless capitalism will save her. Why godless? Because it is about time that someone else’s belief or lack thereof in your favorite 2,000-year-old fairy tale stops dictating whether or not you respect them.
Black, white or brown, 4K HD looks better. Male or female, that new iPhone looks better. Christian, Muslim or Atheist, Egyptian cotton sheets still feel better, and an Audi still drives better.
Call me materialistic, but America worships only one real god. He is green and covered in the faces of dead white men. Out of many, money.
Caleb Pracht is a junior public policy leadership major from Nashville, Tennessee.
