opinion
Opinion pieces from the left, right, and everyone in between.
Institutions vs Independent Living
The issue of putting the elderly or people of disabilities in institutions versus allowing them to live independently has been a debate for years. While there are many arguments for both sides, many people remain uneducated about the effects each lifestyle has on the population being housed.
By Lorraine Woiak8 years ago in The Swamp
It's Now or Never: Will You Answer When the Caller Is Change?
The world is a big, crazy, scary, and emotionally draining place. The ups, the downs, and the in-betweens keeps us emotionally unstable despite our best efforts to keep it together. These days, confusion is running rampant, everyone is emotionally distraught, and help is nonexistent. We've gone from it takes a village to calling the police on kids selling lemonade. Kids don't know what it is to play outside, police violence has replaced gang violence in the news, riots are everywhere, and the face of our nation promotes racists rhetoric. We can spend all day talking about what's wrong or even where things began to go wrong, but the bigger question is how do we fix the problem? Who's going to fix the problem? Better yet, who's going to admit there even is a problem?
By Janyne Jackson8 years ago in The Swamp
The World Watches
Thomas Jefferson once said "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." Now that's a strong statement...but it's true. Our governments around the world no longer represent the people who put them in power. The government has become so complacent that they have forgotten whose needs come first. America isn't the only place where it's happening; it's happening around the world! We see it every day, whether we like it or not. The government doesn't represent us anymore.
By Cedric Joubert8 years ago in The Swamp
Writing a New Constitution
Here is a radical idea to bring about social change. The Constitution is constantly in motion, in flux. We need to write a new one altogether since The Civil Rights Act is a major change made in 1964. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 allowed employees to sue their employers for discrimination. There have been major amendments to the Constitution but we as a country need to rewrite it to suit us. This is why I’m proposing rewriting the Constitution altogether to reflect modern times and a desire to state that we are all social equals without regard to race, religion or political leaning.
By Iria Vasquez-Paez8 years ago in The Swamp
President Trump the Ultimate Heroic Archetype of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism Philosophy
The Frankfurt School knew #Trump was coming. #MAGA was always it’s worse nightmare. Now it’s here and President 45 is storming his anecdote after halting the out of control Communist takeover in the making that was Barry. The New Yorker explains why.
By Lourdes Josephina Vitas8 years ago in The Swamp
Why I Abandoned Politics (To Contemplate How Politicians Smell)
To be honest, following politics for the multipartisan political analysis/comedy group Drafting The Hill kind of gave me a (gigantic) nervous breakdown/existential crisis worthy of a pill-popping soccer mom who just found out her husband is banging his much younger secretary that I'm just now beginning to recover from. Politics, at a citizen (plebs) level, really isn't anything except us human beings yelling over each other, ignoring the ignorance of their own "side" whilst screaming at the top of their lungs, furious about what the other "side" is doing. These "sides" don't even represent our ideologies as a nation (except the most extreme of us), yet since the "other side" stands against things we despise (whether it be religion, guns, socialism, healthcare, immigration, environment, trans kids, etc.), battle lines have been drawn and it doesn't matter how alien the rest of the philosophy your party speaks; as long they have one's back on the issues that are (emotionally) important to their members. I know pro-gun liberals and atheist conservatives, because their stance on politics is discussing the distractions the media has us wallowing in instead of discussing what is truly going on. These individuals should think of themselves as just that, individuals, not cogs a part of a larger political machine of which their personality is inherently connected.
By Regular Person8 years ago in The Swamp
The Real "Inconvenient Truth"
There was a video posted on this social networking site about folks who eat canines. Many were commenting about its absurdity and disgusting nature. Though I agree this is, in my opinion, "disgusting behavior," I would be remiss not to add the folly in the biased perspective of this populace, particularly in the U.S. and others like it. All intentional needless killing is "immoral" and if one feels one type of inessential demise is alright, then ALL are acceptable, according to this mindset, by that very same logic. This video showing folks consuming dogs (which I had no need to observe in its entirety) is no worse than individuals eating chicken, pig, fish, cow, crustaceans, turkey, frog, deer, lamb, eggs, etc. Americans seem to be on a self-righteous high-horse and do not appear to recognize the hypocrisy within its own convictions. Somehow, dogs and cats are deserving of our compassion… yet pigs are NOT?! The fact that it is in your culture or you have been doing this for a long time is far from a sound argument.
By Razi'El Muntasir8 years ago in The Swamp
Civil Hypocrisy
Confession: I’m supposed to be out promoting my new LGBT themed romance, Shape of Love. Instead, I’m caught in a tightening vase of anger because of Republicans. Not all of them, there are some Conservatives who I respect and often talk to in the hopes of understanding their positions. The Republicans I’m talking about are the Trump-bots that will parrot whatever lie the Orange one yells or Tweets. The leaders of the party that is supposed to be for families and the working class, ha! Those leaders released a new ad suggesting that all liberals are unhinged, but clearly, they haven’t taken a look at their own party.
By Edward Anderson8 years ago in The Swamp
Have We Lost the Meaning Behind Independence Day?. Top Story - June 2018.
Fireworks have never been my favorite thing in the world. They are loud and potentially could blow my hand off or worse. My brother, on the other hand, loves fireworks like most Americans do. People shell out thousands of dollars to blow up all the products within 24 hours. Most kids these days only know this as one day: the 4th of July. We have stopped calling the holiday what it actually is to the point we now communicate the day with just that; the day it is.
By Ashlyn Harper8 years ago in The Swamp
