Most people think that the USA has a two party political system - Democrats and Republicans. Well in name they do, but in reality they have a three party system. In 2009, a group of more right wing members of the Republican party were dubbed the Tea Party. While not an official party, they act like a separate party. They have split the Republicans so that they can no longer effectively govern. As seen in the graph below, Republicans have controlled the House since 2009, the Senate since 2013, and over 50% of the state legislatures since 2012. And since Jan 2017, the Presidency. With all that power, one would think that the Republicans could pass any legislation they wanted. And yet they cannot. In fact, they are having a great deal of difficulty enacting any significant legislation. It is effectively a three party system but nobody wants to acknowledge this and govern accordingly.
If Americans are unhappy with politics, they should be unhappy with the Republicans. Their fingerprints are all over the steering wheel.
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For many, probably most of the youth in the world, life is pretty fearful and challenging.
You and everyone you know and love, if fact, everyone in the entire world, will be dead in about a 100 years. In other words, in approximately 100 years, over 7.5 billion people will die. Sounds pretty grim. You might be thinking "what's the use", "who cares what happens since we will all be dead", "nothing really matters", etc. Well, in fact, how you and others live your lives over the next 100 years does matter. It matters a great deal. The vast majority of you are living lives that are much better than lives lived a hundred years ago. "Believe it or not, today we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species' existence." Harvard University Professor, Steven Pinker wrote a book called "The Better Angels of Our Nature" in 2011 in which he makes a very well documented and powerful argument in support of this bold statement. Paul Heinbecker is a retired Canadian career diplomat and a former Canadian ambassador to Germany and permanent representative of Canada to the United Nations in New York City. He recently participated in a round table discussion on the CBC Radio program, Ideas, called "The Challenge of Peace". He started his comments with these observations.
It isn’t as bad as it looks. Your life is better because people before you did care. They did not give up, even in the face of horrendous events - both natural and man made. Now it is your turn to care. Your turn to see the big picture. Your turn to work towards a better world. Think about the values you will live by such as Honesty, Respect, and Love. Doing that alone will help make this a better world. In a hundred years from now there will still be 7.5 billion people on earth (maybe more). Their future will be even brighter because you saw past the short term deluge of negative news that the media likes to dish out - because you cared. For an optimistic start in this process, you might want to read Steven Pinker's forthcoming book - Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress |
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AuthorRetired and loving life. Archives
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