The Purple Wave Maryland Needs

Commentary by: Courtney Hart

Party affiliation aside, the rising political violence in the United States is keeping many people up at night, wondering "Who's to blame?" In times of chaos and confusion, this type of question makes sense. If we knew who was at fault, we could then seek justice or retribution, right? Maybe. Or maybe, it would just lead to the continuing cycle accelerating. I wonder if we'd be better served wondering "How did we get so divided?", "What is it about our system that it seems to incentivize polarization?", and "Who benefits from the deep division of the American people, domestically or abroad?"

Those questions might be harder to answer, but when we only seek to blame others, we forget the truth: we're all a little bit purple. The artificial binary that has been sold to us has people convinced that you are either "red" or "blue," with "us" or with "them," but these vague concepts cannot capture the nuance of the human experience and outlook. It erases the humanity of millions, and it is literally getting people killed.

If the American Experiment is going to survive this, we have to step outside of the (validly) emotional parts of our minds and consider the hard, logical questions.

How We Got Sorted

The Inside: Brain & Biology

Our brains are natural classifiers of information, sorting automatically under our conscious detecting all day long, and their oldest job is to keep us safe. 

Right now as you are reading this, a part of your brain (amygdala) is scanning for safety, and if suddenly a gigantic T-rex popped out of your screen (RAWR!), your brain would register the threat milliseconds before your thought (OH EFF!) and extremely quickly activate fight, flight, or freeze (BYE!).

Over millions of years our brains evolved to protect us from hungry predators and keep us safe from other groups of people, or tribes, that were threatening. Just as we learned to sort creatures and terrain to stay safe, we learned to sort who was a danger ("them") and who was safe ("us"). And the “us” that we belonged to kept us safe, and alive, because to be ostracized from them could mean literal death. 

Unfortunately, although we have evolved to have other parts of the brain that work better for problem solving, planning, and thinking, and we can even think about our thoughts, the conscious thinking and logical parts are slower than the automatic sorter. When you're in fight-flight-freeze, your brain shuts these parts down to power the most important parts, the ones that keep you safe. And many things, not just predators can set off this stress response, regardless of if they are literally dangerous or not.

The Outside: Our Environment

Despite the decades it takes our brains to adjust to large scale changes, we have seen rapid shifts in technology and society over the last 20 years. We went from reading our news in print form or finding it online after dialing up through AOL, in the early 2000s, to having a constant feed of information that inundates us through notifications that ping all day long.

With less conversations happening in person, and more conversations in cess pools that we call the comment sections, we no longer get cues from conversations that signal safety, like seeing and hearing someone breathe or sensing shifts in body language. Instead, conversations happen between screens where there is no humanity to be witnessed and blocking someone is easy. Nuance is assaulted by immediate responses fueled by our stress response, labeling of others, and sorting people into "red" or "blue," "us" or "them."

Before social media, we still got things wrong, of course, but unless the signs of imminent danger were directly in front of us, we could typically sort through it or talk it out. Our conversations were built on a foundation of connection; we knew the people we were disagreeing with. Even though Frank from down the hall seemed like a closed-minded grandpa with no filter, we also knew we could knock on his door when our battery died and he would happily help us jump start it.

And some of our parents might've watched news "all day," but they really only watched the 5AM, 5PM and 10PM shows; they couldn't be tuned in constantly because they needed to air the Simpsons, Friends, and Jeopardy on a schedule. There was still bias and spin, too, but there was less of it flooding us at once and more time for our brains to process information in between. We didn't have consistent chatter and violent, graphic videos replayed over and over.

The In-Between: The Accelerants

Like gasoline on a fire, we live in a world where our natural sorting is accelerated by forces way outside of our control with a system that incentivizes the "us v. them" mindset.

Social media has created silos where algorithms reward outrage and division because it keeps us scrolling and commenting, lining the pockets of corporations who get rich on revenue that comes from the hook of anger and fear, and threatening democracy. With feeds curated just for us, we can consume only what we "already know to be true," blocking people we don't want to hear from or muting entire topics from our feed.

And within these broken systems, information gets distorted. 

Recently, NBC shared that a poll they conducted determined that "Gen Z men who backed Trump in 2024 rated having children at the top of a list of choices of how to define personal success. Gen Z women who backed Harris rated it second to last." But upon a closer look at the data, of the 2,970 Gen Z respondents, 59% didn't vote in the last election, 24% aren't even registered to vote right now, and 33% identified as independent. 

Context doesn't make headlines, but manipulated data does.

Beyond our online world, our political landscape continues to incentivize divisive language. Gerrymandered districts create safe seats that reward extreme candidates, and in places like Maryland, closed primaries mean only voters registered with a party get an early say in our representatives.

Added into this volatile mix, foreign adversaries are spending millions to amplify our divisions, knowing that it weakens us. They may not intentionally create new conflicts, but they're out there commenting and contributing to the radical, dangerous, divisive rhetoric that exists in the fringes of both parties.

How We Get Back

With the inside, outside, and in-between working together to reinforce natural sorting of “us” and “them,” we end up responding to caricatures, not humans. 

And every time we dehumanize our neighbors, we hand a little victory over to the conflict entrepreneurs and other bad actors.

But, what does it really mean to be "red" and what does it mean to be "blue"? 

When did the box we check to vote become a defining part of our identity? 

And how do we stop the violence, when we no longer see humanity in others? 

Be More Purple

To me, being purple doesn't mean you're a centrist or have wishy-washy stances. Being purple means you don't align with top-down, two-major party systems dictating policies from afar. You don't support systems that block civil discourse by keeping antiquated voting methods while technology reshapes everything else. You recognize that people are people, many of whom are as lost and scared on "either side of the aisle” and few of them who change from being screamed at.

Purple isn't just a nice idea. It's an intentional, systematic response:

• Purple counters algorithmic manipulation by actively seeking complexity in people rather than accepting simplified feeds. When algorithms keep us in silos, purple searches for the place where someone's political values surprise us, like remembering that someone driving a Tesla might love the environment, not Elon.

• Purple counters data manipulation by demanding context and digging deeper than headlines. When polls claim to represent entire groups of people, we look at who actually participated. When we're presented with large numbers like "millions,” we ask for percentages and more details.

• Purple counters emotional manipulation by refusing the binary that weakens America. When we resist the narrative that only extremes exist, we stop handing victories to those who benefit from our chaos.

Lead The Way

Maryland is said to be a “little America,” and similar to the country, we are divided here as well. We seem to only see the furthest ends of the political spectrum, with no language for the in-between. We're explicitly taught that if we align with anyone else, we're vote splitters contributing to society's downfall. After decades of this, we're no longer responding to real humans or having conversations about solving real issues.

With 975,000 independent voters in Maryland, and Purple Fridays back on the calendar, what if we actively fought back against the narrative of “red” versus “blue”?

No one is saying you have to like everyone, but if we can't step back from this dichotomy and see people as more than their political affiliation, we can finally realize that the real danger isn't "them," it's the constant flow of terrifying news and the destruction of nuance.

Purple might not be on our flag, but it's patriotic. It supports national security, elevates democracy, and improves our quality of life in communities.

So, the choice is ours, Maryland. 

Keep handing victories to those who benefit from our division, or build the purple wave that saves democracy. 

I choose purple. 

What about you?