opinion
Opinion pieces from the left, right, and everyone in between.
America, I'm Looking for You
This is an open letter to America. I am looking for you, we all are. As a child I admired America and I was proud to be American. Over the last few years that feeling has greatly diminished and I am left with the feeling of sadness and loss. I am 26 years old and have lived here my entire life. As a child I watched the world around me with a light in my eye. I had role models who had high moral standards, Presidents who had common sense, and a sense of safety that I feel I will never feel again in my own country. I am not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the way America forgot who she is. She forgot what she stands for and what she stands against. I, at 26 years old, am watching my great country fall apart. Everyday there are stories of senseless acts of violence being committed in our country against one another because of the color of someone’s skin, their religion, and their sexuality, all things that we are either born with. We cannot continue to hurt each other. We have enemies in too many other countries for us to turn on one another. This new “normal” in America: It is “normal” to be afraid to go to public places because you don’t know who will yell disgusting language at you or potentially harm you. We are afraid to send our children to school for fear that a gunman may take their lives. We are afraid to be our true selves for fear of being outcast. When did this happen? When did we forget what America stands for? When did we forget how to be DECENT human beings? That Golden Rule we were all taught as CHILDREN has been forgotten. Instead of people taking accountability for their actions we now allow people to make excuse, we EXCUSE the behavior because someone has had a hard life, or because they can afford to pay off whoever makes the consequences. And what is worse is that instead of us holding the PERSON accountable, we look at their race, their religion, their political association, or where they came from and we judge them based on that. We blame their behavior on those things instead of the many other things that really contributed to their behavior. Sounds like the news, right? But unlike the news, politicians and celebrities, I understand that this is ALL our faults. What everyone fails to see is that this isn’t a Democrat vs. Republican issue, or a Black vs. White issue, this is a HUMAN issue. We all share one thing in common: WE ARE HUMAN. We all hurt, bleed, cry, get angry, say horrible things, and lash out but we have forgotten that we are only HUMAN. I turn on the news daily and it’s always the same rhetoric. No one is trying to solve the issue. Our president is not the issue—we all are. We can only control the way that we react and nothing else. This constant eye-for-an-eye behavior must stop. Someone must take a stand and say, "NO MORE." We will no longer behave in this ridiculous manner. We must stop pointing the finger and instead hold our hand out in hopes that the other side will reach out too. This is not the best that America has to offer and it’s not the worst, yet. If WE, and I mean everyone in America, does not put a stop to the intolerance, violence, and crude language that is being used to hurt one another, then, America: I am afraid we have lost you forever.
By Dominique Hansley8 years ago in The Swamp
Radicalization: Warm Up, Performance, Finale
Radicalization takes many different forms, but the process of it seems to be identical in each instance. In my opinion, there are two most pressing instances of radicalization at the moment: Islamic radicalization and White supremacists.
By ovaryacting8 years ago in The Swamp
Institutions vs Independent Living
The issue of putting the elderly or people of disabilities in institutions versus allowing them to live independently has been a debate for years. While there are many arguments for both sides, many people remain uneducated about the effects each lifestyle has on the population being housed.
By Lorraine Woiak8 years ago in The Swamp
It's Now or Never: Will You Answer When the Caller Is Change?
The world is a big, crazy, scary, and emotionally draining place. The ups, the downs, and the in-betweens keeps us emotionally unstable despite our best efforts to keep it together. These days, confusion is running rampant, everyone is emotionally distraught, and help is nonexistent. We've gone from it takes a village to calling the police on kids selling lemonade. Kids don't know what it is to play outside, police violence has replaced gang violence in the news, riots are everywhere, and the face of our nation promotes racists rhetoric. We can spend all day talking about what's wrong or even where things began to go wrong, but the bigger question is how do we fix the problem? Who's going to fix the problem? Better yet, who's going to admit there even is a problem?
By Janyne Jackson8 years ago in The Swamp
The World Watches
Thomas Jefferson once said "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." Now that's a strong statement...but it's true. Our governments around the world no longer represent the people who put them in power. The government has become so complacent that they have forgotten whose needs come first. America isn't the only place where it's happening; it's happening around the world! We see it every day, whether we like it or not. The government doesn't represent us anymore.
By Cedric Joubert8 years ago in The Swamp
Writing a New Constitution
Here is a radical idea to bring about social change. The Constitution is constantly in motion, in flux. We need to write a new one altogether since The Civil Rights Act is a major change made in 1964. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 allowed employees to sue their employers for discrimination. There have been major amendments to the Constitution but we as a country need to rewrite it to suit us. This is why I’m proposing rewriting the Constitution altogether to reflect modern times and a desire to state that we are all social equals without regard to race, religion or political leaning.
By Iria Vasquez-Paez8 years ago in The Swamp
Why Israel Matters
Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for Donald Trump, is currently celebrating the publication of his new book Jerusalem: A Biblical and Historical Case for the Jewish Capital. Chief among the arguments presented in the book is Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish nation-state and, inevitably, the right to defend itself against any threats.
By Ezra Berkman8 years ago in The Swamp
President Trump the Ultimate Heroic Archetype of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism Philosophy
The Frankfurt School knew #Trump was coming. #MAGA was always it’s worse nightmare. Now it’s here and President 45 is storming his anecdote after halting the out of control Communist takeover in the making that was Barry. The New Yorker explains why.
By Lourdes Josephina Vitas8 years ago in The Swamp
Why I Abandoned Politics (To Contemplate How Politicians Smell)
To be honest, following politics for the multipartisan political analysis/comedy group Drafting The Hill kind of gave me a (gigantic) nervous breakdown/existential crisis worthy of a pill-popping soccer mom who just found out her husband is banging his much younger secretary that I'm just now beginning to recover from. Politics, at a citizen (plebs) level, really isn't anything except us human beings yelling over each other, ignoring the ignorance of their own "side" whilst screaming at the top of their lungs, furious about what the other "side" is doing. These "sides" don't even represent our ideologies as a nation (except the most extreme of us), yet since the "other side" stands against things we despise (whether it be religion, guns, socialism, healthcare, immigration, environment, trans kids, etc.), battle lines have been drawn and it doesn't matter how alien the rest of the philosophy your party speaks; as long they have one's back on the issues that are (emotionally) important to their members. I know pro-gun liberals and atheist conservatives, because their stance on politics is discussing the distractions the media has us wallowing in instead of discussing what is truly going on. These individuals should think of themselves as just that, individuals, not cogs a part of a larger political machine of which their personality is inherently connected.
By Regular Person8 years ago in The Swamp
