Divided States of America
Today I will turn away from sports and rather venture into politics. I do not wish to make this article partisan but rather mention problems and potential solutions. I will continue to post on the World Cup and other big sporting events on Sunday. I turn towards politics because we as a nation are going to have a very important election in a few months. If even one person reads this article then it will be worth it for me because it will be a small step in the right direction. America is deeply divided and moving to extremism in politics.
As we all know in 2016 a very controversial man named Donald John Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States by the Electoral College. As many people also know the runner up in the Electoral College vote Secretary of State Hilary Diane Rodham Clinton got the most total popular votes. Also she won the the nations largest state California and our largest cities including New York City, Los Angles, Chicago, and our nations capital Washington DC.
A factor that made us more divided is that the Presidents party the Republicans won both houses of Congress with a large majority in the House of Representatives even though they only won a 51% of the popular vote for Congress. Republicans also won the vast majority of governorship's and state legislatures even though they only took the popular vote by a few percentage points in down ballot issues. This lead to a Republican landslide result even though the party won by a few percentage points. This is likely because of two factors: First because the Republicans dominated rural communities resulting in winning more legislative districts then the should and secondly because of partisan gerrymandering by republicans. Partisan gerrymandering is when a state legislature draws the congressional districts unfairly in the majority parties Advantage.
This has resulted in resentment and polarization in elections since 2016. In 2017 there was a special election in Alabama to replace the attorney generals senate seat. The Republicans Senate Nominee Roy Moore was accused of committing unspeakable crimes before the election. He only lost the election by a few thousand votes. In 2018 things are only getting worse. In the West Virginia Republican Senate Primary a convicted criminal named Don Blankenship got over 19% of the vote in a 3rd place finish. In the Pennsylvania Democratic Congressional Primary four socialist won. This year has also had unusual videos both on the Democratic and Republican side of the election. One of those in the videos Brian Kemp has made it to a runoff election for governor of Georgia. Here are some samples:
In the First video the Candidate literally plays with a firearm. In the second video the politician sprays himself with pepper spray. In the third video the politician has a "Deportation Bus". These videos are directly taken from there own you tube channel and are not satire.
The american people need to reject extremism. The far right and the far left need to be rejected. If this does not happen then people will get further and further apart. We do not have to agree with each other but we need to be able to hear each others arguments and understand each other. If this does not happen we will cease being the United States of America and instead we will be the Divided States of America. United we stand divided we will fall.
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