alphanumerica a platform for American political discussion

You don't need to be a scientist to understand the extent of the threat that human activity is posing.

All forms of life that we know of live on planet earth. Think about it in this way for a while. Learn about all the creatures that have already gone extinct. The rate at which they are going extinct is incredible. Unbelievable. I could fill this article with lots of carefully chosen facts but it would be better if readers just search for the specifics for yourselves. The background rate is the rate at which animals used to go extinct, that ought be your starting point.

One of the toughest parts of this topic is that scientists are not in agreement. They employ various tools for measuring and they take different approaches to try and explain physical phenomenon. Most serious scientists will also attach a confidence level to their predictions. Thus, what I'm saying is that no one scientist is definitively right, and his/her colleagues are constantly trying to point out ways in which each other is wrong.

If I were to cite specifics, this might seem more compelling but that would invite people to argue and the whole point I am trying to make is that climate change cannot be debunked. We might as well expand the term to also include the other types of changes that human activities are causing. Think of all that decomposing plastic in the ocean. All the nasty chemicals we put into the water supply. We cannot just expect that the forms of life will deal with the pollution, nor can we expect that the engineers and scientists will fix it.

This planet is not just ours. It is the environment of all living things that we know of. We cut down a forest, for the wood and so we can build housing developments. Then animals who used to live in the forest, either find a way to survive in our backyards or they die.

Since Darwin wrote the Origin of Species, evolution has gained some traction. But not everyone believes Darwin was right. These same people believe that everything is for them, like manifest destiny. These people are idiots. The animals that lived in the forest we cut down were special. They were unique because their ancestors evolved surviving in that exact environment.

Think of what our descendants are being left with. Really consider the path we are going down. There is hope but continuing the status quo is the problem. We need everyone to realize that climate change is an existential threat, we needed them to realize it yesterday. Tomorrow will do, but that is unrealistic. Good luck.

What would you say to the world?

Would you be wishing ill upon the world? Asking others to inflict harm against those who wronged you?

Perhaps you would be asking others to prevent the harm that you endured. Such suggestions seem as if they would be noble.

Imagining one's own death can help a person realize what actually matters.

We have seen a sharp rise in the frequency and death toll of mass shootings. Cable media has a predictable standard response. First they play some footage over and over again of scared people exiting buildings, followed by official press releases and extensive discussion about gun control. The official story tends to change over time, but by that point they have already become fixated on their longstanding gun control agenda.

It is worth noting that I am not alleging some kind of conspiracy here. Obviously the footage of people fleeing the scene of the shooting is original each time. But the sad truth is that the conspiracy theorists go wild. Security footage is rarely released immediately, and as the official story changes people start to come up with alternative explanations. Releasing that gruesome footage would certainly put an end to most of these delusions but everyone understands that grieving people don't need to see that.

The Republican controlled congress is not going to vote any comprehensive gun control bill into law. For a moment though let's consider what is being proposed and whether it would prevent anything. First of all there are already hundreds of millions of guns in America. Gun laws in some states are extremely strict and in others nonexistent. Which means that if a person really wants a gun they will probably be able to get one.

These mass murderers tend to have bought their guns legally from authorized sellers. Which to me suggests that expanding current background check procedures (to be required for private sales also) is unlikely to prevent these horrible tragedies. Something I haven't heard suggested is a mental health check as a component of the background check that occurs when someone declares their intent to purchase a firearm. This might seem to be a really good idea but it would be costly and probably ineffective. Judging by their arsenals and how effective some of them were, it seems likely that these shooters were gun enthusiasts for a considerable period of time. Whether they were in decent mental health at the time of purchase is unknown but there is no reliable test for mental competence. Surely an undiagnosed crazy person could seem normal for a day, or a totally normal and safe firearm owner could snap.

So what would work? There is no simple answer. If you've been watching the news coverage of these cases, you'd have realized that there is a lot of distain for the "military-style" weapons, commonly referred to as assault weapons. Non-gun enthusiasts who advocate for stricter gun laws frequently don't even seem to understand basic technical terms. If they did, they would understand what semi-automatic means. For those who don't know, it means that when the trigger is pulled a single round is discharged and another round loads into the chamber. Many people believe that banning this type of weapon would prevent mass shootings.

Anyone familiar with the facts would realize that the five to ten million people who own AR-15's are just the tip of the iceberg. There exist many types of semi-automatic rifles which happen to be painted black. I'm curious what anti-gun people think ought happen to all the already owned guns.

Another recent suggestion is raising the age requirement to 21. It is a bit ironic that people are legally allowed to buy a handgun and have their first drink on the same day. Jokes aside, I'm not sure what this would accomplish. The would be mass murderer would have to wait a few more years to kill. It might be effective in the case of the school shooter because perhaps a former student would change his mind in those few years. Who knows... Attention was brought to "bump-stocks" because they basically enable automatic fire out of a semi-automatic rifle. A bump-stock ban seems like one of the most likely pieces of legislation to be voted and signed into law, but such legislation would have only prevented one attack that I am aware of.

The best solution I can think of is to take better care of each other. This kind of thing didn't used to happen. For decades, for generations, people owned guns without trying to kill as many of their fellow citizens as they could. Yet something changed and now people desire not only to do that, but to spend the rest of their life in prison, or be killed by police. That is indicative of a serious social problem and none of the solutions about controlling guns seem to address that underlying problem.

The amount of unactualized potential that will never be actualized is sickening. The potential is stored within the mind and soul of millions of Americans who were let down by not only their schools, society and parents but by the lawmakers.

The lawmakers will be infuriated when they read this; perhaps so will the teachers, administrators and parents. But the sad truth is that we are all a part of society and we all have the opportunity to help others succeed.

We assist people in attaining success not because we care if an individual is successful but because we need good Americans to contribute and enact positive change. Every single person in a community contributes in some way to the overall momentum of that community.

If we continue down this negative path, allowing potential to be wasted, our children and their children will resent us because their suffering will be unimaginable. It is not complicated.

Focus on an issue to issue basis. Consider the implications of climate change, think about how disadvantaged students are at low-income schools and consider the perspective of the innocent people who we consistently bomb, think of their families and their neighbors. Be empathetic.

The most beautiful, cute, pretty, women are the worst. They love their cell phones, their social media; yet they know zero about how the world works and they find the men who make it work repulsive. Those women are a disgrace to humanity. Putting on their makeup everyday, in complete ignorance of the fact that they need no make up, they merely need confidence. The men who need these females the most are treated like scum.

You do not need a padded bra, nor blush or nor plastic surgery; you need to realize that professional athletes and dickhead "cool guys" don't make the world go round, the smart people make the world go round. The profiteering politicians might seem useful, in so far as they can provide return on your investment but that is bad karma.

I hate blonde women so much, it is my desire that you all suffer the exact same horrendous misery as the men who want you so badly. You consistently reject the intelligent men who could benefit most from your support and companionship. If only you knew what it was like to have to approach you. The only reason you might be with this man is money, but if you were with him from the start then that would be irrelevant. You don't deserve the suffering that I have endured. In all likelihood, you couldn't handle 1/4 the suffering I have, but what you fail to realize is that you will suffer more on your 40th birthday than I ever did. Being alone sucks. Unfortunately for you, losing your beauty is the ultimate suffering. When your value depends upon your beauty, you eventually lose.

Treat men who improve the world with respect. You and I both know that the men who work to improve the world are infinitely more valuable than the guy who can slam dunk. Yet you pretend that inflicting suffering is worthwhile. It is a goddamned disgrace how stupid you makeup wearing, anorexic bitches are.

For instance, my intention in creating this site was to have a place to discuss important political topics, philosophical principles and whatever else I feel like posting.

It is apparent to me that other people don't really want to contribute to the discussion. They want to sit around and wait for something to be posted; they probably subscribed to the RSS feed and created an account. Yet when it comes to contributing they are uninterested.

I firmly believe that figuring out which policy positions will better the country the most is a worthwhile endeavor. Unfortunately, I'm not getting a whole lot of feedback. Maybe you agree, maybe not. How would I know? I cannot read minds.

Exploring thought experiments is also a worthwhile endeavor. Philosophy instructors usually get to answer questions and contextualize but not me. Your loss.

Frustration is irrelevant at this point, I sort of desired to write an article, but without hope of a real conversation being sparked with readers, what am I doing here? I could just as easily think about my ideas and not share them with y'all.

From the beginning of alphanumerica.net it was declared that readers ought contribute. If not monetarily, they should at the very least be commenting with some sort of response. Predictable that nobody does. Just understand why posts aren't happening is not my fault but yours.

The reason I have not started a Patreon or some other similar account is that I have no interest in being required to write.

If you want a contractual article written, write me an email, it would bring me great pleasure to complete a task for you; obviously negotiation would be necessary.

If you want to contribute, leave a comment; tell me how wrong I am, I love that.

I will not continue contributing for free, it is antithetical to my objective of happiness.

I Know That Users Can Leave Comments, I Know That You Can Send Emails.

This Project Is Officially On Hold, Until You Cunts Start Showing Some Fucking Respect.

Would It Be So Much To Ask For A Comment, A Reply, A Fucking Follow On Twitter?

Apparently It Is Too Much To Ask, Apparently I Am Supposed To Keep Writing, Contributing, Indefinitely, While Receiving Nothing in Return!

I try as hard as I can, in all the ways I am able to contribute. Writing articles, essays, tweeting and podcasting.

Nobody responds. The only thing people do is look at me with disgust when they see me smoking a cigarette or drinking. Nobody approaches me, they just look at me with sad eyes.

It's 100% apparent to me that they are doing so not only because second hand smoke bothers them, but because they want me to not do those things for the sake of my own health.

What they fail to understand is that those things are not mere coping mechanisms, they are things that give me pleasure.

Perhaps in some other dimension, I am an accomplished, well adjusted businessman, politician, or journalist, but in this world I am not.

Instead I am the person who nobody calls, nobody responds to, nobody gives any social respect to. They just suggest I not smoke, not drink, and get a normal job.

I've got some news for you people, if you tried a little bit harder to support me, maybe I wouldn't want to drink and smoke so often, maybe I could write even better. I'd certainly be more happy. But that isn't God's plan for me, the plan for me is to suffer and give everything I can.

With all I contribute, y'all should really just look the other way if you see me doing something you know is bad for me. Or you should approach me and be nice.

If you really have my interest at heart, respond with a comment below; if you are one of my long lost friends, shoot me a text, tell me you'd like to catch up; if you are some stranger but you see potential in me or in anyone else, try to help your fellow human being succeed.

See that optimism? That is coming out of a very damaged person yet I still try to be a positive force in the world.

Anyone who has seen as much shit as I have would understand why I do not like people, why I do not want some shitty minimum wage job.

After you have suffered the way I have and you end up not drinking, not smoking, we can talk about my bad habits. Until then, go cuddle with your significant other, go out to a bar with your friends, or talk to someone who will pick up the phone when you call them, because those things are all very foreign to me.

People will say things like, "why don't you go out more often, why don't you find some new friends or a S.O.," I'll tell you why, because I don't want to. I have had too many bad experiences, to keep trying the same things over and over again like an insane idiot.

I've tried every approach I can think of and failed. And so thus I wait, I am content. Someday it will be different. Just realize society, the longer society forces a person to live in isolation, the less they want to socialize.

The most sad thing about this is that I am not sad while writing this. I have thought these things so many times that it is actually nice to put them on paper.

Now I'm going to get back to living my life. Have a good one.

Many Americans have an extremely negative attitude towards undocumented immigrants. As if their coming here, in pursuit of opportunity, is causing serious hardship for American citizens.

I've covered in other articles the extent to which "illegal" immigrants contribute to the economy, by doing jobs most Americans don't want for wages that Americans would find unacceptable.

The ironic bit is that American drug policy and the war against communism caused immense problems for South and Central Americans. I really ought use present tense because the problems are ongoing.

Between arming rebels, staging coups and installing leaders, I'm sure they very much agree that they want us to stay out of there country too. Unfortunately, that is not possible at this point, we trade with South American countries, we vacation there.

Drug policy we could modify, perhaps decriminalization is feasible, which would improve things in the long run. But in the short run, millions of non-citizens are in the U.S. and our economy is entangled with that of Mexico, Central and South America.

We ought at least try to communicate with them in a respectful way, for the sake of progress, rather than slanderously referring to them as some sort of horde of criminals.

Latinos are hard working people who deserve respect, regardless of place of birth or nationality.

The profiteering needs to stop. It is bad for the world.

Much like bankers who requested bailout money, then gave themselves bonuses.

People ought be paid a fair wage for their labor. But not a penny more.

Weapons manufacturers should not be profit motivated because the logical consequence is an incentive for the government to engage in wars.

The status quo is unacceptable; evil is a more fitting term.

Nothing motivates people like the exact opposite of what they want. Corporate Democrats are upset that Trump has moved the Overton window right. They will be even more upset by the reaction. Within the next decade, the corporate Democrats and the corporate Republicans will be replaced.

Far left policies like those proposed by Bernie Sanders and Justice Democrats will be enacted. It is inevitable. The logical and worthy adversary is the true conservatives like Rand Paul, who I disagree with but simultaneously respect for being ideologically consistent.

We need campaign finance reform. The corporations, the educational institutions, the unions and the lobbying firms have a strangle hold on our politicians. The politicians know that to be re-elected they need not good ideas, they need dollars. Incumbents are re-elected a staggering 90+% of the time, yet their approval rating hovers around 20%.

They lead us to believe that all those contributions are in good faith, that there is no "return on investment," no quid pro quo; lies!

There is no reason that campaigns need last over a year. We just need more open debates, more engaged citizens, and less slanderous negative campaign ads.

Do not worry America. The bullshit is almost over. These profiteering bastards are going down.

Dear Females,

When you dress yourself up as a sex object, when you do everything in your power to suggest to the world that you are an attractive thing to be sexually desired, do not be surprised when the world treats you like an object to be sexually desired.

I could take a lot of time to write this in an obscure way, but it will be much easier and less time consuming if I just say this as bluntly and clearly as I can.

Females, when you wear low-cut blouses, short skirts/dresses, or skin tight jeans/yoga pants you realize what you are doing right? When you wear lots of make up, especially blush to make your cheeks all rosy, you realize what that reminds us of? It makes you look like a doll. A doll who just had an orgasm, or maybe an aroused doll or perhaps merely a fertile doll.

I'm not saying that females shouldn't dress that way, or that females ought not wear makeup. Just consider how thick your panties are, how thick your dress is, and imagine a man wearing those yoga pants, that skirt. You would find that offensive right?

Consider the way it feels from a man's perspective. I don't mean that metaphorically. Literally consider how it would be if you had a six inch dildo inflate where your clit is, every time you saw a person who you found attractive. Obviously grown men do not have this reaction, we either learn to control it or just stop caring when we see a promiscuously dressed woman strutting around in front of us. But the fact remains that your sex organ is internal whereas a male's is external.

Also, consider how much value is derived from female beauty. Society encourages women to make themselves into sex objects every morning. It is sad, I wish it were different. But the tough truth is that females pressure other females to do these things, whether well intentioned or by competition. A female dressing a certain way, or wearing makeup a certain way, is considered baseline. Anything less than that baseline is considered lazy, as if such a female has an asset that they are failing to deploy.

Thus, a female who falls below that baseline level of effort will be coaxed by her friends, they might take her to get her hair done someplace new, or do up her makeup the way they like to do their own, perhaps even lend her some clothes so she can feel all the attention she can get if she just "tries" a little harder.

P.S. It goes without saying that it is wrong for a man to touch you without your consent. Period. I am not blaming victims.

Currently there exist two types of working people. Type one, does what they do because of money; type two makes money doing what they love. There is a huge difference between doing what you love 60-80 hours a week, and working 60-80 hours per week because you have to.

As the world becomes increasingly automated, what will be the fate of those two groups? It is apparent to me that automation processes can do most of those type one jobs. Whether it be stocking shelves, cooking, serving, assembling, driving or countless others, a robot can do most of those tasks. We can imagine a drone that puts things on shelves or cooks food to a precise internal temperature. Surely a modified version of the shelf stocking drone could deliver food to tables. A robot can even assemble and repair other robots. It sounds like science fiction but it is a reality that we will soon face. Which begs the question: what happens to all those people who need work? All those people who need money to pay bills and provide a good life for their family? I do not know.

Many people from the second group are threatened in the exact same way. Imagine that you are an executive chef. You train your staff to prepare dishes exactly the same way every single time. At some point in your lifetime, a traveling salesman might propose to the owner of the restaurant that you work at that they buy and install some new computerized kitchen.

"Rather than pay staff who want benefits and vacation and a consistently increasing wage, instead just buy this new machine. It needs no time off, it maintains itself, and all you have to do is buy the other robot that drives around to pick up all the necessary ingredients and you're all set."

Obviously this won't happen overnight. But we are already seeing automation creep over the horizon. Autonomous cars are basically here. Assembly lines that manufacture cars integrate more and more technology every year. The answer to that tough question, what happens to all of the humans who need work? has been pondered for a long time. The picture I have painted here is not particularly novel. Some have suggested universal basic income as a solution. That doesn't seem particularly feasible to me, given the current climate but maybe it could work. Honestly the tough reality is that people might be slowing progress until we can figure out the answer to that question.

The scope, as far as this article goes, is YouTube. However I believe this notion also applies in a general way to being a human being in society.

Content creators do not understand what they did wrong, they reach out and try to ask their manager/connection, yet the person is basically powerless.

The content creators just want some guidelines so they can earn advertising revenue. Granted, many of these creators are no longer creating content for the sake of it, they are creating content because they have a mortgage to pay, they have car payments, they need to pay bills like electric, cellular and internet that allow them to upload content.

YouTube could easily publish some guidelines, some kind of rules that perhaps even the advertisers could write, that would make content more valuable from their perspective. Unfortunately there is no such communication going on. My opinions about the quality of content aside, I think content creators ought at least have a chance to make a living the way that they previously could.

Unfortunately, it seems that YouTube is in big trouble. It might just be a matter of time before it goes under. We could speculate that ad-blockers are at fault, or the costs of all those servers they have to run in order to allow anyone to upload unlimited terabytes of data is not sustainable or maybe we could figure out which content scared all the advertisers away. We might even be able to make an argument that the media moguls want YouTube to go away, because new media is posing a threat to the old money moguls. But no, all that speculation is a waste of time.

All that matters is being able to pay ones bills. If the powers that be will not communicate and facilitate that happening, then fuck it. Find a new platform. Just don't sit there, complacently allowing them to screw you over.

If you do everything in your power to be family and advertiser friendly, if you create content of value, then communicate with your competition and find a new place to compete.

Ever notice the way that instability is contagious? What I mean to say is that crazy is contagious but that would be improper and offensive. When people get emotional and make illogical choices, it affects the people around them. If it is just one person who one might not care about at all, then most people can just brush it off. But we live in complex social networks.

If the barista is having a bad day, that seemingly doesn't really matter. But if he is the barista at your workplace and he is venting all sorts of sad stories to every single person he serves, that could presumably impact morale. Similarly, when someone has a positive outlook and is being overly optimistic it can also cause problems. Everyone has met a person like that who is fake happy all the time, almost as if they are oblivious to all the stressors of the world. For other people whose mood fluctuates depending on what is going on that day or week, they sort of always want to tell the cheery person to shut up.

An interesting metaphor for understanding interpersonal relationships is gravity. The longer you have known and cared for a person, the more gravity between the two of you. Sometimes two people become so close that they drift away from the rest of their friends, family or from society altogether. Rather than going off on a tangent, lets get back to the original subject.

The chaos that a single person can cause today is greater than at any other point in history. You could do a case study on the chaos that has been caused just through a powerful leader who shall not be named's twitter feed. By injecting just a little bit of uncertainty, over and over again, day after day, the mental stability of millions of people might have deteriorated. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, it certainly makes life more interesting and exciting, but there are probably millions of people who wish that he who shall not be named were banned from twitter.

Anyone who has ever been in a bad relationship understands the contagious nature of relationshits. The relationship started out great yet now is barely hanging on, both people are just hoping it gets back to the way it was. Once a person has had that realization, that the relationship is not going to work out in the long run, it transitions from being a relationship into a relationshit. In some cases before a person even crosses that mental threshold, many friends, family and coworkers have already unnecessarily suffered. Not only does that negative energy make the couple less happy, it also makes them less productive, and many times it even negatively impacts their physical health. For people who care about the two of them it can be an agonizing experience, seeing them losing sleep, arguing on the phone and whatever else.

Let me approach this from another angle. Have you ever had a really bad day? After some unfortunate thing happens in the morning, the whole rest of the day is just miserable. By the end of one of those days, it sometimes is difficult to even remember what the first bad thing that set the tone was. Negativity and stress have a way of compounding and by the end of it, some other thing -orders of magnitude worse- has happened.

I try to avoid that. Mainly by caring less about the little stuff. Unfortunately, some things are out of our control. If a significant other or parent or child or boss says something or does something that might send me on a downward trajectory, I try to shake it off. Because at the end of the day, you don't want to think back to that relatively insignificant moment, with that person who you genuinely care about and blame them for whatever unrelated thing happened later. It is easy to slip down the negativity slope, once a person is upset or angry, they might take it out on someone else. Next thing they know, they were just really mean to some random person who did nothing wrong. Then comes the remorse, the regret, and the confusion. Notice that this is what I meant by instability.

Everyone lives in a relatively different world. You could look at two people who live in the exact same conditions, let's imagine two roommates in an University dormitory. Student one and student two could even come from similar socioeconomic conditions, they could both be healthy and could even have the same major and still be radically different individuals. One might flourish in college, lots of friends, always doing activities, never missing an assignment; meanwhile the other roomate flounders and flunks out of College.

Now imagine two people who have nothing in common. Such as a person from a rural area and a person from a city. They both might vote for the same presidential candidate or senator; they might get along better than the college roommates who have everything in common because their differences give them more to talk about. Or they in some way balance each other out. This is very interesting to me.

Within the realm of politics, it is sort of difficult to imagine that the same candidate could earn the votes of people who live in such different environments who live such different lives, but they do. Rather than get into some pessimistic thread about gerrymandering, we shall continue to explore a few ways in which people differ and I'll offer my theory on why they can get along and why they choose to elect the same politicians.

It is not my intent to negatively stereotype here but people in rural areas tend to work outside more often than those in cities. Whether they work with animals, grow crops or merely maintain their property. Conversely, people living in cities tend to work indoors more often. Not that either is superior or inferior, those are just facts.

I'm not sure who is more likely to create a greater number of jobs, probably the person in the city because people in rural areas tend to take pride in having a lot of repair skills. Perhaps they even hire people to help raise animals or harvest crops. People who live in suburbs and cities tend to think of their time as being very valuable and would rather just hire someone to change their oil, repair their leaky sink, or mow their lawn.

Returning to the college students, one would think that two people with so much in common would get along great but this is rarely the case from my experience. When people are so similar, same sex, studying the same subject, etc. they frequently end up competing.

My explanation of why so many people with such different lives can vote for and back the same politicians is basically that certain themes resonate well with people. It is also relevant that by the end of the primaries and caucuses there are typically only two candidates. Certain character traits and virtues also resonate well, regardless of lifestyle. When people see a charismatic person on stage who has crossed all their T's and doted all their I's, it inspires trust. Such a candidate seems competent and gives people hope. People feel confident electing that type of person, or at least they tell the ladies and gentlemen who collect the polling data that they would vote for that person.

That is just one type of many though. Over the course of an election cycle, all sorts of issues are discussed, several debates are had with many opportunities for mistakes, and inevitably there are scandals and unflattering campaign ads.

There is also a high demand for change candidates, these are prominent mavericks who are well respected. Especially in times of uncertainty and struggle, the people look for someone who offers hope that things will get better. From their enemy's perspective, the change candidates are infamous. Occasionally the country is united around change but rarely do both sides of the political spectrum they agree on the proper direction. The status quo is bad enough from the enemy's perspective but shifting the Overton window is absolutely unacceptable. Unless of course it is shifting in the direction they want it to.

Certain policies are alluring to the vast majority of the country. Freedom of speech for instance polls very high will both parties. Unfortunately, the micro-Overton window (a term I might have just invented) on the issue of free speech has recently shifted. Now a bunch of self-righteous kids think that somehow speech is violence. Speech has always had the potential to lead to violence, but in these kid's twisted minds, these overly sensitive whiny little brats who cannot even stomach hearing someone share ideas with a calm tone, if someone is referred to by the wrong gender pronoun they think that ought be criminal. They want the United States of America to become like Canada and Europe where saying innocuous words like he or she justifies calling the authorities. They even believe it justifies violence in some cases, just to shut people up. Oh wait, in their reality talking is already violence and them inflicting physical harm is justified as self defense. Right...

It must be noted that I have no problem with trans people. All I have a problem with is denying the reality of someone's genetics. You cannot whimsically change your chromosomes. That is simply not the way biology works. Also I think we should treat people with compassion and be considerate of which gender pronoun they prefer. However you cannot throw a person in jail, kick them out of college, or exile them from society, for making a mistake like calling a person the wrong pronoun.

Open mindedness is an attractive feature in a politician. So is closed mindedness. It matters what you are open and closed minded about. Nobody is going to convince me that biological sex can be changed by feeling or thinking that you are of the other sex. As if God put you into the wrong body and you just realized it. Now on how we handle this odd trend in society, I am all ears. I can barely believe that this issue is in need of a solution but some people take this issue so seriously, it is incredible.

People tend to like politicians who take the kind of approach that I just did. Taking a firm stance on an issue, and being open minded about solutions. I could keep going but I think I've done enough ranting for the day. Go read something else for a while.

People get gratification from all those likes and "friends" and retweets and followers and whatever else the new hip thing is. A little hit of dopamine when someone attractive texts you, a little hit of serotonin after you send the perfect reply. Silicon Valley has done a very good job getting us addicted to this crap.

Everywhere that people have smartphones, there exists a little microcosm of the digital world. There is a little network of Facebook friends at every High School and every University. It boggles my mind to try and wrap my head around this. Everybody has a digital niche with a clique of friends communicating "there." Coworkers and Alumni are connected on LinkedIn but might give limited privileges to each other on Facebook. Some people have even figured out how to make a living taking photos of themselves and posting them on Instagram. People tweet every stupid thought that comes into their head.

It used to be that photos were something to have in your house, for people to look at when they came over; they were sentimental little things that triggered memories and gave you an opportunity to tell stories. Photo taking was also so much more of an art back then, you never really knew how a photo would turn out, you had limited film and it had to go through a four or five step process in a darkroom before you ever got to see if you captured the perfect shot. It also used to be that when you wanted to talk to someone you sent a letter or you had to call their house and either they were home or they were not. You might have been able to speak to a roomate or leave a message but it was not always an instantaneously gratifying event. Now everything is instantaneously gratifying. All these games with all these bright casino colors. Everything is a competition and everything is quantified.

The first few generations to deal with all of this are in for quite a ride. An amazing ride at times, sure, being able to communicate with anyone anywhere in the world, so long as they have reliable internet; being able to buy basically anything with a few clicks. If you had enough money you could literally call an Uber, figure out where you want to go on your way to the airport, buy your ticket, tell the driver which airline check in counter to drop you off at; then while on the plane, one day ship everything you'll need on your trip to the destination. I'm just spitballing here, but I believe that all this technology is having some negative impacts too. As awesome as that hypothetical sounds, it is kind of scary too.

Cellphones seem more like a digital leash sometimes. People expect you to respond to their text, or pick up their call. If you don't then they'll probably get mad the first couple times then stop trying. It is awesome though that we have such a powerful device in our pocket, it is like having an encyclopedia in your pocket, and if you cannot find what you are looking for, surely you can call someone who knows the answer to your question. It's also a life saving tool, which is reassuring. But there is a flip side, when someone doesn't answer, it manifests anxiety in some of us.

This rant is coming to a close. It was kind of all over the place. Much like the way we can switch between apps with the slide of our thumb. We train our brains to recognize ads and x out of them as fast as we can. Some of us install ad-blockers and never watch another ad on YouTube. That single invention, the ad blocker, forever changed YouTube. Now only the very biggest channels can make a living on the platform, which is a very sad thing because there are a lot of people who deserve to make money from their content yet cannot. Meanwhile the jerks and idiots who scared the advertisers away are living in mansions, traveling the world. I guess what I'd like to say is remember that most of the people on the other end of the social medias are human beings. Watch or click an ad just because it benefits the person whose content you consume. Everything digital might seem free but it is not, people put a lot of time and effort into creating things for you.

Shortly after the inception of this website, I wrote a few words about the role of Russia in the 2016 election, specifically I said:

"Literally, I do not at all blame Russia for what happened in the 2016 election. The American citizens who were involved are another story. If we are such a stupid people that a bunch of unverified lies, spewed by entities on the internet could sway our election then... Karma is a bitch."

It seems that I ought give a bit more of an explanation as to why I said these things. Lets go in reverse order:

"Karma is a bitch"

Just in the last 50-70 years, the United States government has installed leaders, facilitated coups and armed rebels. That is all I really have to say about that but if not already acquainted and are curious, you can figure out what I am talking about by searching for those terms with South America, the Middle East, Africa, or more broadly Communism.

"If we are such a stupid people that a bunch of unverified lies, spewed by entities on the internet could sway our election"

I said this because the U.S. education system is really bad considering how wealthy we are. I'm not even talking about our Math and Science educational shortcomings, what I am talking about is our shortcomings in logic (specifically formal modal/symbolic), history/civics/government and technology. You can look up the polling for yourself but the majority of U.S. citizens do not vote. Most, last time I checked, do not know basic civics facts like the names and roles of the branches of our government. These examples might seem shocking but if you keep digging deeper you find that a lot of people do not know how many Senators come from each State, thus they obviously wouldn't know their names.

More relevant is the fact that people do not understand what makes for a good source. They don't understand how to use a search engine, they don't understand how biased the information that their search reveals will be depending on the terms they search for. This is an assumption but I don't think most people read the articles that they stumble upon, let alone search the net for a couple corroborating or contrasting viewpoints. In reality I believe people read headlines, they trust certain sources and then they read a headline from that source has published and then in their mind that is the case, that is what happened. Which leaves them very open to being manipulated with ease.

"Literally, I do not at all blame Russia for what happened in the 2016 election. The American citizens who were involved are another story."

So in short, yes, if it is indeed the case that Russian citizens were involved in a scheme to steal data and compromising information that they then disseminated in a strategic way to assist Donald Trump in being elected President, then I believe the Americans who assisted the Russians should be punished to the greatest extent possible. As for the Russians though, I expect them to do this kind of thing, especially considering all the historical cases of Americans doing election engineering, and worse.

It should be noted that I do not think what the Russians did was right, but I also do not think it was right that the GOP nominated Trump. I personally thought there were much better and more fit candidates in the field. But I only get one vote, just like any other American citizen.

Do people really believe that they are so important that they can just throw trash on the ground and someone else ought pick it up? Or is it that they believe nobody should pick it up and it should just tumble around in the wind for everyone to see?

I'm a little more sympathetic to the latter because many of us live such wasteful lives, everything we buy is in a bag in a box with ink all over it, and people believe if they just put it in the trash they did everything right. But they are wrong, we could be so much more environmentally conscious.

When we go to the grocery store we could bring our own containers, put our meat and vegetables and cheese and butter, etc. into our own containers and barely waste anything on packaging. But that wouldn't be convenient.

Littering mostly bothers me because the garbage blows around where I live and then I have to pick it up and put it in the trash. Else I have to see the water-bottles and wrappers and styrofoam and all the rest blowing in the wind, which pisses me off.

We also don't build products to last anymore. It used to be that you bought some really impressive cutting edge piece of technology and it took you a few weeks or months to save up enough to buy the thing, but then you could hand it down to your kids. These things were build to last and built to be repairable.

Now everything is made out of plastic. It is supposed to last a year or two, then you go back and buy a new one. Eventually the crap ends up in the oceans or blowing around my backyard; or best case scenario, out of sight out of mind in a landfill.

It has come to my attention that a seemingly reputable organization, Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN), whose logo was posted on this website during an advertising experiment, is alleged to have employed a White-Nationalist who took part in the Charlottesville protests. RSBN in no way contacted or compensated this website for displaying their logo. The logo was selected due to the high-quality and relatively unbiased coverage of breaking news done by Steve Lookner (@lookner on twitter). Admittedly, the brands featured in the experiment were chosen whimsically. I am not even sure if they generated a single purchase or donation.

Lookner works extremely hard to cover events such as natural disasters, protests and rallies, among many others, in real time. If you are unfamiliar with typical cable news coverage of unfolding incidents and events, the networks tend to find a few clips and just loop them over and over again. Whereas Lookner/RSBN scour the internet with the help of viewers to air the most current footage they can find as stories are developing. Despite the fact that he remains very good at his job, alphanumerica will not be affiliated with any White-Nationalists nor any Identitarians and I urge Steve, if he reads this, to distance himself from anyone who falls into either of those categories or anything that resembles them.

Let's set emotion aside and try to understand what is at the core of the White-Nationalist philosophy. So the first logical question is: what is whiteness? This simple question really challenges White-Nationalists. Assuming they can figure that out, and people of certain genetic heritage or ancestry or whatever can be classified as white, black, brown, etc. then what happens if a person is 1/2 white 1/2 black? Are they white and desirable or black and undesirable? What if they are 3/4 white and 1/4 black? Setting that aside also, what is to happen to undesirable non-whites and partially undesirable mutts?

The basic tenet of White-Nationalism is that the United States is a historically white nation and it ought be kept that way. So basically they are saying that America has become too brown and black. Some White Nationalists go by other names like Cultural Nationalists and Identitarians, which might seem to not be about race but I believe many of them self-identify as these in an attempt to avoid being called racist. They will focus on issues like cultural assimilation and reading/writing/speaking fluent english as being requisite for all Americans. Which is a bit ironic but I'll avoid the temptation to make a joke.

Among these groups, there is little consensus about what ought be the fate of the undesirables; some say they ought be sent out of the country, others want segregation. The most popular solution to voice publicly is that they want whites to have more children and simply outbreed browns and blacks. Please comment below. I understand that some people are more comfortable around people who look like, talk like and are like them. Hopefully you can understand that for members of the "undesirable" groups, there is a justified fear that they will in some way be persecuted should y'all attain power.

Everyone always expects there to be ice in the bin.

When the lever gets jammed up because nobody takes care of all the accumulation, they start yelling about me.

Those are my days off, which I get yelled at for. It's okay though because I am a working creature, completing tasks gives me satisfaction.

My good days are the days I don't get yelled at. There is very little variation; the power is on, I have water, and that is how it is supposed to be.

Sometimes, after someone leaves the freezer door open for too long, I get a nice breath of fresh air, which admittedly makes my job take a little longer but the change is pleasant, unfortunately then all the cubes get stuck together and refrozen into a block.

Nobody shows appreciation for the ice maker. They just get mad when it doesn't turn out exactly what they expect it to.

It is a preposterous, no it is a ridiculous expectation -that no matter how much variance there is in their lives, I am supposed to always produce exactly what they want.

Rain or shine, doesn't matter if they haven't opened the drawer in a year or two, they expect it to be precisely as they desire.

P.S. I started writing this before I remembered that ice is slang for a drug. So for the record: no this poem or whatever you want to call it has nothing to do with drugs.

If NFL coaches would just go with their teams or perhaps just send a few representatives to police departments, to specifically talk about (1) The killing of unarmed people and (2) The injustice of being profiled by appearances then they might be able to improve community relations just a little bit.

Many players come from areas plagued by gangs, violence and drugs. The only way out is through sports, music or a miraculous academic scholarship. Many of the incarcerated were victims of their circumstance.

Gangs provided protection or necessitated all people in their locality to pick a side. Young people might not have wanted to pursue entrepreneurship in selling narcotics but it was one of the few options they had.

Many adolescents in these communities find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Their biological parents might not be together, their mother or father might work long hours, multiple jobs, or perhaps might be completely out of the picture, addicted to drugs, in prison, any of the above.

None of the aforementioned is frequently mentioned in television broadcasts of football games. Maybe during a commercial for a charity or something. The least they could do is raise awareness about the conditions from which many athletes arose.

At some point we will not only need to have a balanced budget we will need many years of surplus. This seems less and less likely as the population is expanding, and the largest components of the budget are Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security and Defense. Population growth wouldn’t necessarily increase military spending, yet we consistently spend more and more on that every year. Simultaneously we are cutting taxes. Infrastructure is crumbling which will certainly cost a significant sum of money to improve. It is not just roads. It’s airports, dams, water and electric lines.

With improvements in medicine and healthcare, we should expect that more and more people will be collecting Social Security. It is a well known fact that without restructuring, those funds will eventually be insufficient. Politicians promise that these things will be taken care of, that a deal was made and the United States government always honors its deals. Yet somehow every few months we get to this potential government shutdown.

I honestly just want to understand when this situation gets resolved, when do we start making progress towards paying off the debt? When do we pass a balanced budget? Or will politicians just keep putting it off for someone else to deal with?

Some economists say that the health of an economy shifts from healthy to unhealthy at the point in time when one year of GDP = total national Debt. Politicians don’t even seem to think about thresholds and indicators of economic health, all they care about is maintaining power. They want their constituents happy and appeased so they can likely be re-elected. The other critical component for re-election is the appeasement of big money contributors, their Super PACs and campaigns are not only funded by wealthy people but also by Corporations, Universities and Organizations.

Accounting for this re-election incentive, it makes sense that politicians ignore looming long-term problems like deficit spending and the GDP/Debt ratio. It also makes sense that they focus on the stock market which is not particularly representative of the health of an economy.

It seems obvious that these long-term problems will be passed on to future generations. Unfortunately, the thresholds at which the problems become urgent may not be as far out as the people in power want us to think that they are.

My suggestion here is not to panic. When you hear conservatives suggest that Social Security will run out and we must increase the retirement age, look up the data for yourself. In actuality what the research suggests is that in the 2030s, Social Security will only be able to pay out 85-90% benefits. When they say “run out” they are trying to scare us into fearing that it will pay out 0% which is just not the case.

Similarly when we look at the astronomical weapons, defense and intelligence budget -which has basically turned the entire world into a giant haystack that is nearly impossible to find needles in- we see that our budget roughly equals that of the next six countries combined. Yet they still need more money. They make us afraid by saying the military is crumbling and it is so so very weak. Which is just not true.

Rather than spending more money, we as a country need to start thinking in the long-term. We need to start pressuring the government to better spend the money we give them and cease overspending. Eventually someone will have to pay back the debt. Every deficit penny we spend today, is a penny that must be paid back later, plus interest. In fiscal year 2017 interest on the national debt totaled $266 Billion!

The fear of losing one's job is widely present in the U.S. As if undocumented immigrants and legal guest workers pose a serious threat. The apparent solution is a "merit based system." Which doesn't make any sense. Well educated, highly skilled workers, would probably earn high incomes, probably higher than the median or average salary of an American citizen.

Whereas so-called "illegal" immigrants and guest agricultural workers do labor intensive jobs for less than minimum wage in many cases. Is that what conservative Americans are afraid of? Losing their day laborer job which requires them to constantly wait out front of a hardware store looking for work? Do they want jobs picking fruit, mowing lawns and housekeeping? I doubt that.

Many people hold the unrealistic belief that they will soon be rich. Some people are perfectly content and expect to make roughly the same amount of money for the rest of their lives. But a lot of people believe they are about to get that big raise or that they will soon switch careers and double or triple their annual income.

So within this "American Dream" mindset, why would you want highly skilled workers immigrating to the U.S.? It just doesn't make sense. The only explanation that adequately accounts for this inconsistency is an underlying fear that low skill immigrants are more likely to be criminals. Which from research I have read seems not to be the case. In fact immigrants tend to commit less crime than people born in the United States.

I'll leave my personal opinions about immigration out of this article. I am just legitimately trying to understand the root cause of this negative attitude towards immigrants.

Serial deceivers have a few tools in their arsenal. Here are four tactics I frequently notice being utilized.

1) Lying is a simple yet tried and tested method of deceit. If the information they wish to conceal is x then they could say y; z; a; b; c; …

This is not a particularly effective tactic because of scope. If a person is asked, "where are you?" and they answer,

“some random place,”

it would be very easy to bust their lie by checking to see if they are indeed where they say they are. The important thing to notice here is that most lies are easily checkable. With a modest expenditure of time or money, most facts can be checked. Which brings us to the second tactic.

2) Omission. Since lying about something draws attention to that something, if a person or organization wants it to stay under wraps, they will likely avoid the topic altogether, and in so doing conceal whatever it is. When tactic two fails, and attention is drawn to whatever it may be that the entity doesn’t want investigation into, they are forced to engage about the subject.

3) Omission of relevant facts is easiest to understand within the context of a story. If a person is asked what did you do earlier today, they would respond with some kind of linear story. I woke up, had coffee, ate breakfast, went to work, drove home… They might ramble on about how exciting or drudgerous some part of the day was, in an attempt to conceal or avoid discussion about whatever little bit they want to keep hidden.

The last occurs after being busted. Lets just say on person’s way home from work, they stopped at the local mall and ate two glazed cinnamon buns and person doesn’t want their spouse to know because they are supposed to be on a diet together. Their spouse is on to them, they could smell the creamy cinnamon on their breath as soon as they walked in the door and they alert the person to the fact that they know.

At this point we get to the final tactic:

4) Distraction. A person who knows they are busted will talk about anything other than the bad thing they did. They’ll ramble on about the faults of everyone other than themself, amplifying the conflict and trying to get the sensitive truth knower to forget about whatever detail they thought they could successfully conceal.

An inquisitive person might wonder how people can get away with lying in the age of the internet. It seems obvious that lies would simply be proven wrong with a search, a few clicks and some reading. Assertions and propositions about objective reality usually have a truth value, they are either true or false. The case or not the case. Sometimes a proposition has an unknowable truth value, either because it is a prediction or because we do not have perfect information. In rare cases, we cannot know.

A person can make a claim such as, "I saw an alien spacecraft" or "there exists in some remote corner of the world a species of bird that only I have seen." Such cases are to be taken with a grain of salt because they cannot be corroborated or verified, it's just one person saying something that would be very difficult if not impossible for someone to confirm or deny after the fact. Birds migrate after all and returning to the same site at the same time of year might not reveal such a bird if it did exist.

Take the case of the UFO, a person out alone at night sees a pattern of lights darting around the sky. They conclude that it was alien. Now when they tell people, what is the likely response? If their friends really trust them, or are predisposed to believe extraterrestrial aircraft are flying around Earth, then they will probably believe the story.

Other people might come up with alternative explanations. They might say "oh well it was probably a drone" or "perhaps some kind of optical illusion" or they might even just disregard that person's experience entirely as some kind of attention seeking behavior. Without evidence or any reason to trust a person, that seems somewhat logical.

The way that lies spread in modern America is much like the scenario of the guy's friends who believe him. A person in a position of power and influence has already acquired respect as being a reliable source of information. The technical term for this phenomenon is an appeal to 'ethos.' When a television host you watch daily says something, or a priest you see weekly says something, a person is inclined to trust them.

I hesitate to call it brainwashing, but these people who blindly trust, and raise their children to blindly trust, are living in a somewhat delusional reality. It is not my intent to say that all television hosts are liars nor that all priests are liars. Both groups have many honorable people who try as hard as they can to report the honest truth and are highly ethical. Unfortunately not all are. These people in positions of authority have great power. Some learn that it is easier to get away with big lies rather than small. So they attack the ethos of dissenters. "Scientists are not to be trusted, nor are the fact checkers, nor the professors."

So in short, you get communities of people who believe completely untrue things, and they reinforce those false beliefs among themselves. They live in a bubble of confirmation bias and closed mindedness. Fact checking and questioning the authority figure who tells you Earth is 5000 years old, as an arbitrary example, results in some circular logic explanation and eventually if you do not submit to their appeals, in exile. Asking tough questions is frowned upon. A person might refer to dinosaurs or carbon dating or ice core samples or any number of things; and that person is up against an entire community of people who think that is all nonsense. After all it takes a great deal of effort to learn, lots of long nights reading, applying oneself, doing experiments and math. People are not born understanding isotope decay and trying to teach a person who believes science is for sinners about University level science is a lost cause. I wish it weren't but it is.

You can bring great sources, peer reviewed research, science textbooks, articles written for laymen by the most brilliant people in the world, and the community will laugh at you. Very little, if any, time will be spent doing research, actually exploring the possibility that the proposition is true, in good faith. Rather, they just clap their hands because watching you challenge the authority figure is entertaining. It does not matter whether the figure is right or wrong because the community has already agreed to believe and external sources are not to be trusted.

P.S. I believe there is a lot to be learned from the Bible, I also believe there is a lot to be learned from any book written about ethics and morality. Each should be considered in its own right. However, the supernatural aspect, the selective following of certain rules while pretending others don't matter and the denial of science bothers me. Jesus seems like he was pretty chill though.

Whoever you people are, where ever you got the idea that this website will help you cheat your way through college, you couldn't be more wrong.

University may very well be a giant waste of money. With a good reading list and a few hundred dollars in books, or a library card, you could easily learn as much academically as you do at a four year school.

This website may be used as a source, but this is not a resource to be stolen from.

The pricing page is intended for professional journalists and opinion writers, not lazy college kids who can barely speak english.

Alphanumerica is basically a blog at this point, it is not yet well known, but just imagine what your professor will think if he reads the body of work on this website and then recalls how strikingly similar it is to your paper.

Will the professor assume you had it published here? Or will they think you stole it from here? Guess it depends on both you and the professor but I am not in the business of writing papers for lazy students, rich foreigners and athletes.

Y'all need to earn your degrees. Any future comments about this being an academic writing service website will be deleted.

If a user would like something published, send an email.

Check the about page or the pricing page.

Free users may comment.

The United States of America has a racist past. Many people believe it is still a very racist place to live, others point to the past and claim it has gotten much better, some even say that it is no longer racist at all.

My general rule is that saying racist things is wrong, unless it is funny. Provided you didn't already rage quit reading this article, you might understand that jokes can serve as icebreakers. Jokes can also inflame old wounds and ignite the rage that basically ends a conversation, so we must be careful when talking about race.

It is not my intention to claim that the state of racism in the whole of America is any specific way. As each different town, different home, different bar/pub/tavern is going to have a different perspective on this issue. Something that is fine for one person to say might not be fine for another. On one day in the midst of a long and complicated conversation between two people who deeply respect and understand each other, something might be said that an outsider would find deeply offensive.

We see this kind of thing all the time on television. A quote is taken completely out of context and outrage ensues about how unacceptable it was for some person to have said that. As if such a thing can never be said without career ending consequences. This is... problematic, for lack of a better term.

Unless the full context is understood, passing judgement is not fair. First and foremost the context of the interaction must be understood. Then the historical context, and finally the interpersonal context. To try and do this for America is a gigantic undertaking and would surely end in disappointment.

However I can try to dispel some silly yet popular notions. So by the context of the interaction I mean a full description of what happened. In the case of the U.S. we had slavery. Where yes, black slaves were purchased, transported and utilized for their labor for several generations. During this time each human being counted as 3/5 of a person for purposes of allocating representatives. Next after gaining rights, their votes and their rights were far from equal to that of white people.

Now some might object, what about Irish people? or Asian people? and yes I know that they had a similarly bad time but I am not writing a dissertation here. So after having the right to vote, and yes I am sure someone might object, what about women, they surely got the worst deal, especially African American, or black American, or Asian American or whatever type of Woman and yes you are in some ways right but that is another article. I would point you towards the article titled "Woemen," I believe you can search for it.

So after acquiring the right to vote came Jim Crow laws, a fairly consistent effort around the country to systematically limit the political power of African Americans. I apologize, sincerely, if my terminology is offensive but I cannot appease everyone. Then after the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it became illegal to discriminate on the basis of race. At that moment, all Black Americans became equal right?

No they did not. This is basically where we find ourselves today. Some might point to Barack Obama and say, look a half black man was President, obviously racism is no longer a problem. Wrong again. Returning to my original metaphor, in some places, racism very well might be a scar that has healed as much as it can. But the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, meaning people are still alive who were not afforded the constituent protections that it provided. Thus we must be understanding, we must anticipate that younger people grew up with family members who suffered unfair treatment, and probably shared those stories with their kids and grandkids.

In all likelihood, the scar is more like a scab that can be ripped open at any moment, so we must be sensitive about these issues. Talking is necessary. But labeling people racist to disregard their points and to essentially end the conversation, claiming to be the winner and the other guy the racist ignorant loser, is not productive. It is not effective at generating progress. The truly racist person does not want progress. They do not want a 100% black President, in fact they want to send all the blacks back to Africa.

Some people say that racist jokes are never okay and, you know, people who make such distasteful jokes ought be put in jail or something. I do not have a solution, I definitely disagree with that sentiment though. If people can cohabitate peacefully then great. Ideally people would be thriving together in a symbiotic way as members of society should, but if that is not possible then leave each other alone.

Occasionally I hear about some new study, published in some not-peer-reviewed journal that average people cannot even recognize as reputable or not because they aren't the type of person who reads academic journals. They will make assertions about Race or Genetics and Intelligence Quotient or whatever. Now I do not know if the data they use is accurately collected, I do not know if they used good methodology, perhaps the whole thing is just made up, which does happen from time to time in toilet paper quality journals. Either way, we must consider the whole context.

Not only the obvious history lesson I described above, but also the fact that public education is largely funded by local taxes. In less affluent areas, teachers are paid less, parents work more hours just to pay the bills, drugs and gangs are rampant, and many of these kids are malnourished. What is the solution, one might ask? I do not know. Each specific issue has to be researched and solutions must be tested and it is a long process. It is not my intention to say that white communities with the exact same problems do not exist, they absolutely do, there are probably more seeing as "whites" make up 70% of U.S. population.

It breaks my heart when I hear that funding is being cut for critical programs. It is a rare occasion when the "think of the children" argument effects me. So in conclusion, to try and unite people a bit here, I suggest we frame the issue more about class. Disenfranchisement is an issue to this day and the barriers that hider a person's ability to vote and express themselves politically are more economic than anything else.