Guest Column 

It’s that time again! You may have been witnessing some argumentative conversations, closed-mindedness and completely one-sided Facebook posts.

It comes once every four years, folks. We’re talking about the election season.

Have you felt demeaned for sharing you won’t be voting this year?

Have you looked down on others for choosing not to vote, let alone for your political hero?

While Thanksgiving is all about family time and food, election time is all about getting at each other’s throats, taking on a radically relativistic opinion and going to war.

The characteristics of election season certainly have something to do with the leaders that are competing.

If your coach starts cursing at the opposing team’s players and insults them, it’s likely his players will start doing the same.

Here’s the issue, though: in this analogy, our candidates have the impact of the coach and we the players.

This is not how things should look. We should be the coach and the candidates the players. Our presidential candidates should be more impacted by us.

The players don’t serve the coach. The coach serves the players. The people don’t serve the president. The president serves the people. So if a candidate is not serving me, then I’m not a part of that team.

Every political advertisement on television shows politicians talking themselves up or bashing their opponents.

Either they claim they are pro-everything-we-want, or refuting the claims of their opponents.

Let’s go back to the sports analogy for a moment.

How many Olympic competitors did you see insult one another this year? How many did you see tear one another down in an interview?

I saw none.

You know what that kind of environment encourages in competition? Positive growth from both competitors.

You know what we don’t see in this year’s election? Positive competition.

I would love to hear that Obama and Romney share a beer and hang outside the presidential debates.

It has to be awkward going to the same towns, avoiding one another, and having their only interaction take place in negative arguments.

If election season were a holiday, I would love it to be characterized by honoring our president’s previous term and the excitement and preparation for the new term to come, whatever it holds.

I am neither for Obama or Romney.

As a citizen of the United States of America, I am entitled to my vote. The only problem is that they are not offering my vote as an option.

We should not determine our vote by who is giving us what. It should be determined by the kind of man they are.

Neither of our candidates seem capable of being good enough men to properly handle a positive relationship with their opponents.

As a nation, is that how we want things to be handled with our enemies?

Give me a box to check that will restart the election process. If majority check it, then it is probably best we go another round for different candidates.

J.A. KINGRY 

senior from Omaha, Neb. studying philosophy