The Biggest War America Is Fighting Is With Itself

I grew up In the border town of Fort Erie Ontario. When you live in a border town you tend to grow up not necessarily believing that there is a border between you and the country right next to you.
We knew there was another country across the river, but it never felt like it. We felt like we lived in a suburb of a mid sized American city called Buffalo We went there all the time to shop and eat and watch wrestling and AAA baseball games.
We all knew Americans. I had friends and girlfriends in Buffalo. I was comfortable in America, because the America I grew up hanging out in wasn't all that different from my own country.
So I come by my affinity to the US quite honestly.
Things Have Changed
At first it was just in small ways. Cultural ways. The explosion of rock and roll. Then came JFK. We all rejoiced when he was elected. He was young, handsome and a visionary. He was a true Democrat and really defined what that mean from there on out.
Then they killed him. Then the cultural revolution started. Then the Vietnam era started and the the changes grew more pronounced.
Since those days, America has, in my opinion, devolved, from a nation that understood itself under Kennedy as a true democracy. The world respected this and much of the world beat a path to America's door. Seeking opportunity. Seeking freedom. Seeking sanity.

But less than a decade after Kennedy's assassination, America had grown more and more confused about what exactly it was. And that confusion just became more pronounced at the years passed.
America's economy still leads the world, but during the second GW Bush years, its image became genuinely tarnished by a dim-witted form of imperialism that ended up killing a lot of American soldiers, padding the coffers of assholes like Dick Cheney and the elder Bush, and creating even more identity issues for the country.
This of course gave rise to an extreme right wing movement called the Tea Party, which shifted the centre of the right wing in America further to the right. This imbalance was immediately picked up on by the greedy bastards on Wall Street who proceeded, for short term gain, to crash the US economy.
The country, at least the sane people did the right thing and voted in another Democrat, named Obama, who is a master statesman and someone who had a plan to put the ship right again.
But the country was in such bad shape and the political divide between the left and the right was so wide that this turned out to be a long and arduous process that is still incomplete.
The reason for this slow progress had to do with two things.
One: Obama was a Democrat. The Congress and Senate were controlled by Republicans who were very (stupid and) public about the obstruction they were putting in Obama's way.
Two: Less public was the fact that Obama was black, and that resentment was what really fuelled the obstructionism.
So despite all of Obama's hard work and good intentions, certain segments of the country, namely the working class, whose jobs were lost to the third world and never coming back, became extremely disgruntled and blamed Obama for a whole lot of stuff over which he actually had no control.
Like corporations displacing tens of thousands of workers by moving their operations to Mexico, India and the Pacific Rim countries. Bruce Springsteen because very popular writing song about this.

Sharks Always Swim In Troubled Waters.
Then along comes this slimy, self-absorbed monstrosity named Trump...a low grade rich guy and opportunist who saw the chance to have some real power instead of having to kiss the asses of the super rich to build his golf courses and resorts.
And over the course of the last several months, his insanity and ego have proven to be off the charts.
He is a traveling train wreck, and he knows it. He preaches salvation for the marginalized, but he never says how.
He preaches war but he never explains how the country will pay for it.He preaches isolationism, with no respect for the fact that America became a great country because of its immigrant population, not in spite of it.
He is ‘anti' just about everything you can think of, but he doesn't actually appear to be 'for' anything other than his own self-aggrandizement.
The lost souls who support him have been brainwashed by huckster tactics that have worked throughout history on the weak minded. And he is helped along by the electronic media, who have given him billions in free air time to spread his message of hate and division.
America is now more confused than ever in its recent history.
All because of one man with no moral compass and no real humanity in him. A sad, vain, pathetic egotist who is probably not even aware of the fact that whenever he is moving his lips, he's lying to everybody who is listening.
And the worst part of it all is that these poor, often desperate, people are clutching at straws. They are ignorant and uninformed. They have no opinions of their own so they mimic his.
They believe that he is going to be their salvation but they have no clue about how he’s going to do that for them. They are the blind, being led by an idiot. This would be hilarious if it wasn't so fucking sad.
These people have been brainwashed into being unhappy with the current government, which has, in actuality, done some incredible work for the country despite an insane amount of obstructionism at every turn.
These people have been brainwashed into believing that all Muslims are terrorists, when the US Muslim community has made it abundantly clear that terrorist groups are not Muslims at all.
These people have been brainwashed into believing that that the Trump with all his ego, blustering, thin skin, inciting violence, outright lies and complete lack of Presidential temperament, is going to make their country great again. Again, laughable if not so sad.
The Road Ahead Is Bumpy As Hell
America has a lot to prove to the world in this upcoming election. First and foremost, it needs to convince the world that it's not off its rocker by allowing a waste of carbon and water like the Trump to get this far in the first place.
The optimist in me hopes that America finds it way out this dark tunnel. And ultimate the forces of good will win this war of identity.
And the pessimist in me believes we’re all pretty much fucked if that doesn’t happen.

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