Letters to the Next President

Dear future Mr. or Mrs. President;

I have, along with the entirety of our country, witnessed too many instances where issues of equality became the catalyst of some sort of conflict. Although I would like to say that this inequality can be boiled down into one central issue, sadly I can not. Race, gender, economic status, and sexual orientation although not all, seem to be majority of these issues.

These views of inequality are not born out of nowhere, they have a source. One of these sources is the bias news outlets and media portray.

Just last month, videos were released that claim “to show Democrats hiring provocateurs [persons hired to make trouble] to incite violence at some Donald Trump’s rallies.” Now although this sounds like a story fit to make the news, with articles of political attacks and the likes in excess across our media, if you were to make a simple Google search about this you would see that absolutely none of the major news outlets have a single article on them. And why is this? Because it brings to light issues that people with the right connections do not want to hear. And it would be ignorant to believe that this type of keep-away with the facts has not been used in any other news, especially those to deal with the issues listed above.

Another source is the true and absolute lack of separation of church and state.

This summer, the governor of Mississippi signed a law that allows business owners to refuse customers service because of sexual orientation. His reasoning being that it upset the religious views of these business owners. So how did our country regress in such a way that we could pass laws that favored the religion of some over personal freedoms of others? And yes, we did regress, almost back to the 1960s where African Americans were discriminated against because of their race. Looking back, everyone realises what a terrible mistake that was yet what is stopping us from seeing that this is no different? It is the combination of the silence of our American citizens and the refusal of our politicians to do anything to fix these problems.

And this brings me to my final point; our politicians staying away from any controversial topic because it would not help them become reelected. Many studies have shown that Presidents have typically accomplished more during their second term than their first because there is no longer the election to look out for. I understand that politicians want to be reelected of course, but avoiding certain topics because it would hurt your approval ratings is unacceptable. When there are issues in our country, they need to be addressed. Sweeping issues under the rug will only create more problems for our future generations.

To allow these to happen is flat out unacceptable. The more we allow this to happen, and ignore the issues, the more widespread these views of discrimination will become and the harder they will be to fix. Ask yourself this question: would you want to live in a world where you or those close to you may be shunned because of something that makes them themselves? No; so change needs to happen and it needs to happen soon.