Tuesday marked just two months until the Nov. 3 general election — the presidential election. Which means, we have just two months remaining before we can start arguing with each other on social media about more important topics — college football.

It’s true that the Southeastern Conference begins play in just a few weeks, but the topic of choice these days when you’re scrolling through your newsfeeds for new pictures of your brother’s child, or short videos of your grandchild’s first steps, is a cascade of hateful rhetoric and misleading news stories — as they are called — about one political party or the other or one candidate or another.

It’s exhausting.

By no means are we here to criticize anyone expressing their First Amendment rights by writing, saying or sharing what they want, but what has become of social media is anything but sociable.

Gone are the days where someone could have an opinion and be respected for having that opinion. Gone are the days where we as a people could have an honest conversation about our differences; a debate standing on the principles we believe in. We have turned to belittling and demeaning one another for an opinion, for a belief. We have gone to tearing down one another in order to gain another step on or over someone else.

Politics has always been a contact sport in many ways; it has been a spectator sport from the very beginning. But what we have turned our politics into is a game of gotcha, a ruthless battlefield of kill or be killed. And, social media — Facebook, Twitter, and the like — have only helped fan the flames.

We all would like to think America is better than others — a stronger society than others – but as our updates, our posts, our shares and our likes have proven, we are not the America we would hope to be, nor the America we need to be.