COMMON SENSE | Thank you Donald.

There’s a chill in the air, pitch-black darkness as I lug my suitcase down the steps. The rolling of the suitcase wheels on the uneven concrete reverberates through the air when at this time of night silence dominates. At 4 a.m., it’s easy to imagine a whole world only inhabited by me with little sign of life and not a soul in sight. It takes approximately 7 minutes to walk from my apartment to the baker flagpole bus stop. At 4 a.m. those seven minutes feel harrowingly long.

THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL | Why America Needs Donald Trump

I have an immense amount of respect for The Donald, and I could not be happier with how his campaign has unfolded.  From his not-so-humble beginnings as just one hopeful drifting in a sea of infinitely more qualified candidates, Donald is the little, tiny-handed orange engine that could of American politics. Watching him rise to new levels of fame has truly been heartwarming, and has imparted some powerful lessons about what it truly means to be an American:

 

In America, you can be anything you want to be. No experience necessary!  If you are white, wealthy and male, that is qualification enough.

WELCOME TO THE ZOO | Health Insurance and Birth Control

With an open mind and two sides of the story, you’re bound to learn something new. Welcome to the zoo! This is a blog where both the Republican and Democratic viewpoints are represented. The blog is not meant to sway you either way necessarily, just to present both sides of the story. You may not agree with the whole article, but hey, you’re likely to agree with half!

ATARISTOTLE | POLITICIANS AS SUPER SMASH BROS. CHARACTERS

Ladies and gents, step right up. You’ve all been waiting for this one. As a follow up to my last article, Super Smash Bros. in the Black Community (a link to that article is at the bottom which may be helpful to read first if you’ve never heard of Super Smash Bros.), I’ve decided to expand on Smash Bros. and mix it in with a dash of politics, a smidgen more of humor, and a concise list of politicians to lighten up the mood as we head closer and closer to yet another historic Presidential election.

MOSKOWITZ | Measuring our Country’s Future

 

Sometimes, they are just hard to avoid. They spring up, almost daily, prognosticating the future and therefore predicting what our country may look like in the  years to come. You can watch them climb up and fall with the change in days, months and years. Sometimes they can seem overpowering, as if their subtle shifts really matter. But that can be the issue, because in the end, how much should we really care?

BETWEEN BARS | When I’m 36

I’ll be 36 years old when he gets out of prison in 2030. It occurred to me that scientists have been saying that by that year all the polar ice caps will have melted. Across the street from Auburn, there’s a small gas station with a convenience store that sells Marlboros and sodas and lottery tickets and bite-sized snacks. Upon my first visit, I found it odd that a string of local businesses would situate themselves so near to a maximum-security facility. I guess Auburn prison has been around for so long that it’s merged into the landscape like a wall in the city.

POLITICS & STUFF | What’s Past is Prologue: Race and Poverty in Contemporary America

Imagine a society in which almost 1 in 4 African-Americans are in poverty; for white people, the number is less than 1 in 10 (Proctor et al., 12). Imagine that society in which not only black children are more likely to be born into poverty, but half of them will also remain there as adults. Only a third of poor white people will stay in the lowest income quintile (Reeves, 1). No, this isn’t the 1850’s. This is American poverty in 2016.

MCEVOY MINUTE | After a week full of scandal, could Trump still win?

If after this weekend you were left wondering what the state of our political system has come to, you are not alone. After a video was released of Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, claiming that he had the right to sexually assault women because he was a celebrity, the Republican Party started falling to pieces. On top of that, Trump tried to brush off his comments as ‘locker room’ talk, failing to  recognize that it is this very ‘boys will be boys’ attitude that perpetuates rape culture and teaches young boys to treat women as sexual objects. Then, during Monday night’s debate, we witnessed one of the most vitriolic displays between two presidential candidates in modern memory, in which Trump and Clinton refused to start off by shaking hands. Social media sites were rife with people voicing their opinions and expressing how appalled they are with this current election cycle.