U.S. Government Blog

It seems as though 2018 has been a long year, partly because news cycles are so fast these days. It’s odd to think that Black Panther only came out in February and there was an Olympics this summer. So many major cultural events have happened in America this last year, that our focus is quickly switched from one issue to the next. One thing that the news has quickly forgotten about is gun control. The Parkland shooting and the ensuing outrage, protests, and news coverage only happened 9 months ago. Our focus on the problem has greatly diminished, but the need for gun control only grows more everyday. According to the Gun Violence Archive there have been 323 mass shooting in America in 2018 alone. There have been 332 days in 2018 so far. And that’s just mass shootings. The number of reported gun violence incidents this year is almost 52 thousand . How can anyone look at these numbers and not be worried about gun violence? Thankfully, laws about gun control are still b...

The blog post from Yaresi’s Government Blog argues that the US should not make election day a national holiday. The author writes that the definition of a holiday does not fit the idea of everybody having to complete a task on that  day. They also point out that not everyone would be able to vote even if election day was a national holiday. Although the author says that people will use the holiday to relax rather than vote, they also write that many people use holidays to do chores and errands. If people were already doing errands, wouldn’t it be easy for them to add voting to their to-do list? The author also points out that not everyone will vote just because the day would be a national holiday. However, the majority of people don’t already vote on election day. I don’t think that giving people the day of to vote would decrease the number of voters, instead it would probably increase the number. The author mentions that traffic and lines to vote would be longer if the day was...

In the article titled “C’mon White House, Name Those ‘Enemies of the People’” posted on the blog Daily Kos, the author expressed their annoyance at the fact that the white house is unclear on who the enemies of the American public are. The article criticizes the fact that Trump often makes accusations about fake news and media companies being a danger to the public, while clearly favoring some new corporations over others. The author seems to being writing for mostly everyone, but particularly for those who already hold grievances with the president. The intention of the article is not prove the inaccuracy of the White House’s statement, but to show that they continue to do so. The credibility of the author is not clear. They do not mention their interest or authority on the topic. The author builds mainly of the tweets and articles of others on the issue and spends little time on their own opinion, which is to simply agree. The authors argument is straight to the point, though not...

Political polarization is a huge and dangerous problem in America. Behind each large political issue that America faces currently is a giant gap between parties. This problem has been building up for decades and poses a big threat to the U.S. If we can’t find a way to lessen political polarization, the major issues for America will take much longer to be solved. According to a survey of 10,000 adults by the Pew Research Center, 92% of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat, and 94% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican today. Twenty years ago, each party was an average of 67 percent to the left or right of the opposite party’s median. These numbers clearly show us that just within the last 20 years, political polarization has reached a critical level. What this means for the American public is large disagreement on important topics, causing these topics to go unresolved. Another study by the PRC shows that Democrats and Republicans have a hard time ev...