By Devin Dubon

It is common knowledge by now that the norms of politics have shifted drastically: They’re more divisive, partisan, bloody – truly a mockery of Congress, a lack of cooperation that would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago.

We can no longer work together. Our current two party system was built on the idea of checks and balances, a way to form compromises that would at least satisfy most of the country.

George W. Bush called for a “middle ground” solution to immigration. Nixon formed the Environmental Protection Agency. Reagan, although hailed as a rampant tax cutter today, called for raising the taxes of the wealthy.

Now, however, any idea of bipartisanship is swiftly defeated, and the Republican party is the main perpetrator in all this. Never before has a party been so resolute in refusing to cooperate, refusing to even listen or acknowledge the opposite side. This situation is well documented: it’s clear the Republican party has changed.

Over the past few years, the average ideology of Republican lawmakers and presidents has gone further and further away from the center, while Democrats have remained at around the same level.

When Obama won the presidency in 2008, Republicans engaged in an all out warfare. Even before he took office, the party planned to challenge Obama at every turn.

“We’ve gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy in a top secret meeting by Republican leadership on the night of Obama’s inauguration.

And they succeeded. Even as a minority in both houses of Congress, they still managed to successfully block many of Obama’s policies. They held the entire government hostage, threatening to let the U.S default on their debt if Obama didn’t make significant cuts to health care. They shut the government down in 2013 in an attempt to force Obama to defund Obamacare. And then there’s Merrick Garland, Obama’s supreme court nominee that Republicans refused to listen to, forcing democrats to lower the threshold on judicial nominees from 60 votes to 51, a decision that would haunt them for years to come.

In the coverage of this, the media tends to place the blame on both sides. “Democrats are firing back,” “Both sides are digging in,” all of these are attempts to seem unbiased and fair but it misses and covers up the fact that all of this was started by the Republican party, and them alone.

This is not normal, and journalists should not pretend it is. The possibility that there is only one side to blame needs to be recognized. This is a difficult topic to discuss because there’s no way to talk about it without coming off as liberal propaganda. Sure, neither side are saints but it’s the Republicans that began this total war strategy, and Democrats must either stoop to their level or simply have no power whatsoever. This isn’t biased, or typical liberal fake news. And it is that pure instinct that people have to accuse that makes it nearly impossible to tackle the true issue, letting Republicans get away with completely transforming the face of politics, everybody too polite to point any fingers.

Everything is not a two-sided issue. It might be hard to accept, but sometimes there is actually an objective bad guy, and if we don’t accept that, the Republican party will continue to twist our Congress into something unrecognizable.