Difficult Times In Our Nation

We have been purposely divided so the ruling class can easily maintain its power. People have been manipulated into hating one another – and our collective enemy jumped at the opportunity to spread hatred and confusion in our country. We are in trouble, no doubt about it. One of my original goals for this website was to unite people – to get people to come together on at least the obvious things that both sides mostly agree on. Sadly, even that seems like a big stretch now. These are very difficult times in our nation.

We have one side that lies all the time. Our president has already told thousands of lies while in office: the number is over 5000 false or misleading claims at the time of writing (October 25th, 2018). But his backers are okay with this. Trump hands a ton of money to rich large corporations… then turns his back on climate change, works with our enemy to get elected, breaks up families at the border, buddies up with the worst leaders in the world, and on and on. It doesn’t seem to matter what he does, as long as he throws something to his supporters once in a while all is well with them.

Deep down, most of these people are decent – just like the ones on my side. That side doesn’t usually say things like this: they have been trained to hate our side. It is probably not possible to unify with Trump supporters, and I wish I was writing different words. But I try to look at things as honestly and openly as I can. Our side makes mistakes too, lots of them. But not like these mistakes…

This has been outright carnage over and over with this administration. We have seen in the past when people get riled up to hate – Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s, for example. Thanks to money or blackmail or lust for power, we have the worst and most partisan leadership we’ve ever had in power today. The Republican party has turned its back on despicable action after despicable action by the president. They have enabled him by not stopping his ridiculous choices.

There has been report after report from people inside the White House about how this man struggles with the truth. It has been reported that Trump’s own said he can’t help but lie. How in the world is this man our leader? And all of this is just scratching the surface. You really do have to have blinders on or be deeply in love with this guy, or yourself, to not see what is happening to our country.

In the good old days, being a conservative meant you wanted a balanced budget (we are now at a trillion dollar deficit thanks to the big tax breaks for the rich). It meant you wanted family values (breaking up innocent, desperate people at our border kind of goes against that); it meant you wanted a strong military (siding with our enemy to win an election without strengthening our cyber security defense shatters that ideal); and it often meant good Christian values (which greedy, hateful Trump is the literal antithesis of).

The right side has the fighters, and the dirty players. It is clear as day who does most of the gerrymandering, who makes laws to help business interests rather than the people, who lies and spreads fear and misinformation to keep their side angry and unwilling to compromise. I am deeply bothered by the reporting of Fox News, as millions of others are and you should be too. The difference between CNN and Fox News is night and day. I watch both: I see CNN bring on Trump supporters and let them speak openly. I see fair reporting.

On Fox, Sean Hannity is the ringleader – and is one of the biggest liars I have seen. He goes hand in hand with Trump as one of his closest advisers, and he continually bashes people and lies to manipulate his viewers. Hannity just spouts nonsense most of the time with no facts to back it up. I, on the other hand, am a fact, science, logic kind of person and will gladly back up what I say with actual evidence. I do not want to be wrong; Hannity doesn’t care what the facts are as long as people believe him. Fox, you can be conservative and even support Trump if you wish – but stop the hatred and stop misleading your viewers.

This is how the right fights, and why they win. They do whatever they have to do and it often works. You will hear me say often that the left side needs to fight. We need to stand up to evil, to lies, to the brainwashing techniques used to manipulate the minds of the unsuspecting. Protesting is very American, but now you will see peaceful protests being called “angry mobs”. If someone on the left says to make some noise with a congressman, the right will say they are calling for violence. They’re great at making a mountain out of a molehill, and our side is just the opposite. It’s time to change that. It’s time we have leaders that push back on this – not with violence but with power of the people. It’s time people: stand up and fight. And, importantly, never ever believe me or anyone else: you have the ability to look things up for yourself. The truth is easy to find, so find it. Are you with me?