State
of the Union: Weak
On the 30th of January, President Donald Trump
gave his State of the Union address to the nation. In it, he said that the
State of the Union was strong. I contend that it is actually weak.
For much of the past year, Trump has made headlines
seemingly every day, usually because of something he tweeted or a comment he
made. Despite his insistence that the Union is strong, we have seen more public
divisiveness than ever before; white supremacist rallies took a huge upturn
last year, as white supremacists felt that they finally had a President who
thought the way they do. Trump has held the nation hostage in order to get
funding for the U.S./Mexico wall that he built. Trump has touted that he is
“Making America Great Again” by pulling out of important agreements like the
Paris Climate Accord, just so he can push dirty fossil fuels like coal, which
only add a few jobs in the grand scheme of things, while putting our
environment, and our future, at risk.
One of the things I think foreigners look at when looking
at our country is the strength and cohesiveness of our government. Sure, no
government is perfect, however, even with that, ours is a mess. With political
partisanship guiding almost every decision, we are unable to solve our own
problems, which makes handling foreign affairs that much more difficult,
especially if Trump is on an “America First” track; how can we help other
countries when we can’t even help ourselves?
Continually, Trump has referred to the issue of illegal
immigration by using terms that lump both good and bad immigrants into one
group. Instead of talking about how many illegal immigrants are here illegally
simply because the legalization process takes too long, he instead decides to
focus on the few bad ones that traffic drugs, kill American citizens, and
sexually assault innocent people, thus making it look like those who reject his
ideas are supporting rapists, drug dealers, and murderers.
Trump has chosen to pull out of agreements like the Paris
Climate Accord, an agreement that ex-President Obama was all for. Trump pulled
out of the agreement because, according to him, it was unfair to Americans.
Why? Not sure. Ex-President Obama went into the agreement due to its stance on
the environment, and with the goal of reducing our contribution to global
warming. Trump, however, only saw how he thought it would affect jobs, jobs in
an industry of fossil fuels, the same fuels that have contributed heavily to
global warming. Trump pulled out because he felt that the few jobs that could
be created by not being part of such an agreement outweighed the clear dangers
to the environment and future of our country.
Recently, the stock market dropped in record numbers for
a single day, dropping over 1600 points, possibly partly due to Trump’s tax
plan that was recently released, partly because of the flop that was the Nunes
memo, and partly because of all the lies he spewed at the State of the Union
finally sinking in. Also, with how influential our stock market is in relation
to the global economy, when our market takes a hit, the world economy takes a
hit, and foreign countries are more likely to look at us in a negative light.
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