I sat there in the backseat as the dented old SUV slogged through some forgotten corner of West Virginia, off the Interstate and in search of gas. Run-down old farms turned to run-down old trailer homes as we rolled through what turned out to be the town center of Pliny, WV, and the solitary gas station that marked the town’s only sign of activity. And of course, right there in the window of the convenience mart, a “Make America Great Again” sign sat squarely between two fading advertisements for cheap domestic beer. Now, the gas pumps at this station didn’t take credit cards, so we had to wander in and speak to the friendly clerk, an older woman wearing a crucifix necklace and smoking a cigarette who immediately recognized that we were out-of-towners. A brief, unremarkable bout of small talk about life in Pliny followed, and we were soon on our way, but something about that tiny little town and that image of the window sign in the beat-up old gas station with thirty-year-old gas pumps stuck with me. I could not help but view those human beings as “others”, and I am certain they felt the same way about me. Not in a malicious way, of course, but one that could lead to disregarding the very real pain and suffering of the other group. As the election winds to a close after over a year of wild twists and turns, I can’t help but consider that empathy is the missing ingredient that has torn our country almost cleanly down the middle.

Now, the easy conclusion is: No, duh. Of course, when everyone is hammered by partisan talk shows and 24-hour news cycles, and when social media causes clustering around similar beliefs, thus shifting people’s informational intake to more match ideas they already agree with, it will cause problems in bridging the gap between Red and Blue states. The problem has only gotten worse over each of the last four elections (which are, incidentally, the only ones I can remember), and it figures to get even worse no matter who wins tomorrow’s election.

So, in recent days, what have I done to make this election philosophically relevant to me? I’ve contemplated the unenviable position of the people with whom I disagree. I’ve really, honestly tried to “walk in their shoes”, so to speak. I sat there, and I meditated on what life would be like if I’d grown up in Pliny, or any other small town dotting the map between the major metropolises. I invite you to join me. Take a moment, right now, and envision yourself growing up in a working-class family in the Rust Belt.

(If you did in fact grow up in a working-class family in the Rust Belt, I apologize for my overgeneralization, and I urge you to contemplate what life would be like, as, say, an undocumented immigrant living in Texas or Southern California instead.)

Mom stayed at home, Dad worked at the factory, or maybe in a store in town. They scrimped and saved and they just barely managed to raise you and your siblings. You went to high school where, sure, there wasn’t much diversity, but you read about Martin Luther King in class and celebrated equality just the same. There was never any issue with racism, and all the differences in the world melted away when everyone was sitting together on Friday nights at the high school football game.  You graduated, and you thought about trying to get to college, but you wanted to make some money for yourself, so you contented yourself with part-time community college while you worked as a clerk and sometimes-assistant at the auto repair shop in town. Somewhere along the way, you had a kid, school got left behind, and you had to get serious about earning a living *NOW*. Unfortunately, the big factory in town was downsizing, laying people off, and you had to settle for picking up some shifts at the Wal-Mart 12 miles away. No matter, you grit your teeth and bear it. You need to make rent, and diapers ain’t cheap! Meanwhile, your brother breaks his leg at his construction job, and gets addicted to the painkillers that the doctor prescribed him.  Ugh. Okay, well, your hours keep getting squeezed at your jobs, and your car is making this annoying whine that you know you can’t afford to fix. On top of that, Mom’s got this hacking cough that won’t go away, even though it’s April and cold season is over. Health insurance? Not since Dad got “early retirement” (read: laid off), and they’re not eligible for Medicare yet. If only there were any good jobs…

Dig deep, and try to identify with the people who would just as soon call you out for being a fool on a public Facebook thread as they would come to your aid if your tire blew out on some remote Interstate Highway exit in Kentucky or Tennessee. Try to see things from their position, see how a certain narrative that has been pushed about the candidates might line up with their pre-existing biases, and how they might view a Hail Mary vote for an unqualified authoritarian as a desirable alternative to the slow decay they see creeping in around them.

If not for the value of empathy in its own right, at least do it because empathy is certainly more likely than antipathy to bring would-be political adversaries around to your way of thinking.

In an odd way, this entire election has been about empathy. Hillary Clinton, while dodging accusations and indictments, has spent the last year repeatedly trying to show her empathy for common voters (with only middling success) while her opponent, Donald Trump, has spent that time expressly showing a lack of empathy to remarkably impressive results. Maybe people like it more when a candidate isn’t obviously trying too hard to empathize with them, and while Clinton makes it too obvious, Trump makes it obvious that he couldn’t care less. People want to win his approval, to be on board with him as he “Makes America Great Again”. I don’t know if this is inadvertent genius on Trump’s part, but it’s not entirely relevant to the matter at hand: Selecting a President.

Look, I understand the impulse to make the election about controversies and scandals. Both major-party candidates have had their fair share of over-hyped, sensationalist stories that aren’t truly pertinent to their abilities as potential Commanders-in-Chief. Of course, you can make this election about emails and Benghazi versus sexual assault allegations alongside a string of failed businesses, lawsuits, and shady tax evasion techniques. However, I generally prefer the more substantive questions about policy that actually determine what kind of President these candidates would make.

Fortunately, I have two wonderful algorithms that I’ve created for each of these axes of the election. One of them smoothes over all of the messy policy differences and offers a choice based on instinct and tribalism. The other ignores any of the candidates’ personalities or histories, and asks the single most pertinent policy question for a young voter. Inexplicably, both of these algorithms point to the same candidate, which demonstrates both my implicit bias in algorithm design and my explicit bias for which candidate I prefer. But enough meta-discussion, let’s get right down to it. (And I hope I don’t alienate too many of you along the way. If I do, please take a minute and pretend like I’m sitting right there in front of you before you hit “send” on that snide comment or message).

Algorithm A (The sensationalist, cynical, content-free algorithm):

1: Which candidate do the KKK and Neo-Nazi/White Supremacy groups support?

2: Vote for the candidate who is most likely to beat that person.

Easy, right?

But let’s pretend like we actually care about the issues for a moment. In a long-range view, there are a few existential threats to humanity that must take precedence over smaller, pettier economic and social issues, no matter how painful those social and economic issues may be to the affected individuals. The most prevalent existential threat to humanity today is most likely climate change, although strong cases could be made for nuclear war, AI catastrophe, or drug-resistant super-germs.

I humbly present for your consideration, Algorithm B (the “there’s only one issue in the long term that matters here” algorithm):

1: Which candidate denies climate science and the existence of anthropogenic global warming?

2: Vote for the candidate who is most likely to beat that person.

Now, I know that over-simplifying the election to a one-issue algorithm is an extreme expression of my privilege, but there is no reasonable way for me to distance my preferences and choices from the circumstances of my (fortunate) life.

And really, we are all bound by the circumstances of our upbringings, the happy accidents of birth that landed us here in the 21st century in a pivotal time in human history. I sincerely hope we don’t blow our shot at overcoming our existential threats and someday colonizing the galaxy, but that is the beauty of our current democracy. Whether we sink or swim is entirely in our hands. We may be divided as a country politically, but until and unless we really do colonize Mars, we’re going to have to learn to live with each other. Whether your preferred candidate wins or loses tomorrow, I urge you to start practicing empathy now, because if we are going to repair the rift in our country, we’re going to need all of the empathy we can get.