America is...Falling Apart
America is falling apart. As a nation we are divided and hate is seeping through our cracks. We have seen this before in our history, but now it has come again. We saw this when the Japanese-Americans were placed in internment camps from 1942 to 1946. America was against its own citizens, afraid of each other. This division was also seen during the Cold War from 1947 to 1991. Everyone was a suspect during the Cold War, and this caused much hate and anger amongst each other. The most current example of America falling apart or having much unrest is with the 2016 Presidential Election. Citizens were either strongly for one candidate or the other and this caused much hatred amount people with different beliefs. It was a nasty Election, full of hatred, that brought out the worst in the whole country. Now we must all wait and see if we can stop our collapse and come back together to the America we once were, not the America where we locked up our own citizens, or the one where we couldn't even trust our friends, but the one where we are all united as a nation and set the example for the rest of the world. We must once again become a nation worthy of following.
Historic Evidence
Two months after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 ordering all Japanese-Americans to evacuate the West Coast. This resulted in the relocation of approximately 120,000 people, many of whom were American citizens, to one of 10 internment camps located across the country. The Japanese internment divided our country and filled it full of hate for the Japanese. America was afraid of the Japanese so they caused chaos out of fear. Fear is a major cause of hate and anger throughout the world. It collapsed our America we know and love and left us with its crumbling remains. But even with it falling apart, we were able to build it back up again. This is the cycle of America; it falls apart and then builds itself back up, until it doesn't.
Americans had long been wary of Soviet communism and concerned about Russian leader Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical, blood-thirsty rule of his own country. For their part, the Soviets resented the Americans’ decades-long refusal to treat the USSR as a legitimate part of the international community as well as their delayed entry into World War II, which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Russians. After the war ended, these grievances ripened into an overwhelming sense of mutual distrust and enmity. The Cold War was, in my opinion, the last time before now that America was falling apart. Because of America's feud with Russia, everyone in America was on edge. This made everyone suspicious of each other, throwing respect and common decency out the window. Coworkers, Neighbors, Friends, and even family could be a Communist spy. This caused chaos and the destruction of classic American ideals.
Since Donald Trump won the Presidential election, there has been a dramatic uptick in incidents of racist and xenophobic harassment across the country. The Southern Poverty Law Center has reported that there were four hundred and thirty-seven incidents of intimidation between the election, on November 8th, and November 14th, targeting blacks and other people of color, Muslims, immigrants, the L.G.B.T. community, and women. One woman in Colorado told the S.P.L.C. that her twelve-year-old daughter was approached by a boy who said, “Now that Trump is President, I’m going to shoot you and all the blacks I can find.” At a school in Washington State, students chanted “build a wall” in a cafeteria. In Texas, someone saw graffiti at work: “no more illegals 1-20-17,” a reference to Inauguration Day. The Election brought out some of the worst in our citizens, but now with Trump as President our America is not Great like he promised, it is now a hot mess of anger, hate, and resentment amongst each other. Little do we realize that we are a unit, not separate groups fighting for their different belief; we are America and we need to come together to make America Great Again by looking out for everyone, not just ourselves. We don't live in a jungle, we live in America so we need to start acting like it.
