This presidential election has seen its fair share of vitriol and low blows, especially as we near the final stretch before Nov. 6. Every election is prone to wild mischaracterizations that feed into the news cycle and angry, eager voters.

Every election pits two amorphous groups against one another, but this cycle has been split into two distinct camps: the rich and the poor.

Time and time again, the debate has been reduced to rhetoric of greedy millionaires and irresponsible poor. President Barack Obama’s camp doesn’t mince words when it smears Mitt Romney’s campaign with attack ads revealing offshore accounts in the millions, while Romney accuses the president of knowing nothing about how to run a business and thus not knowing how to run a country.

It’s not surprising the election has taken such a turn. The economic crisis, like any of its size, has spurred deep-seated class resentment. Things are getting ugly. Countless supporters of Romney say they support him because they support jobs, apparently something Obama is against at a basic level. The wealthy believe Obama is coming for their money and will eat at their hard-earned wealth bit by bit, donating it to lazy oafs who are unable to provide for themselves.

Both sides are wrong.

The nation is at a turning point, in this sense. I can’t speak for the state of affairs after the Panic of 1893, but the country feels more divided than it has before.

The hyper-capitalist mentality, spurred by an increase in Ayn Rand-loving Tea Partiers, takes a grim approach to the poverty striking our country: the rich are rich because they worked hard for it, so they deserve what they have; the poor are poor because they obviously didn’t work hard enough.

On the other side, far-left liberals try to demonize the ultra-wealthy, admittedly a stance I tend to fall into. But what gets misinterpreted here is that liberals or Democrats hate business and economic growth, as if anyone could take that stance. Romney has created a debate that pins Obama and Democrats against small businesses. My mother, who usually votes Democrat, owns and operates her own small business, and I know from her experiences that simply being a business owner doesn’t put you in one camp or the other. If all business owners fed into Romney’s rationale, the race wouldn’t be this close.

America is built on the belief all Americans are deserving. The country was not built on the idea of letting the poor burn or letting the rich get ripped apart by a hungry mob. Neither presidential candidate aims to completely abandon those in need or take apart the wealth of the rich, and despite what Rush Limbaugh has been yelling about, we will not enter a dark age of socialism (God forbid).

The hyper-dichotomy of the debate is leaving actual solutions in the fine print – the curious avoidance of specific numbers in Romney’s tax plan comes to mind. So long as the American public believes the stories both candidates are weaving, the details won’t even matter.

But the details do matter. Creating economic growth is not a black and white issue. The answer lies in the nuances, and so long as we’re content to yell about which percentage of the country we’re from, it’ll never be uncovered.

Meher Ahmed ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in international studies and Middle Eastern studies.