I believe that our country has reached new lows in the past year.  We have become a laughing stock to the other nations on the global stage.  We have become a nation subject to scandal after scandal.  Diplomatic faux pas after diplomatic faux pas.  The fact is that there have been so many egregious errors made that it becomes difficult to even have a discussion because it's next to impossible to know where to start.  Every time you start to wrap your mind about one incredulous issue, three more just-as-difficult-to-believe issues rise up in it's place as though heads from some political hydra of greek mythology.

And so in no particular order:

-The President should NOT be trying to fire people who are investigating his own campaign.  That is a ridiculous conflict of interest and it goes against the very fabric of democracy.  If he's innocent then let the investigation continued unfettered, but the fact that he has been trying so hard to disrupt it does not make him seem innocent.

-Our country was a country founded upon immigration.  We were not a "melting pot" because we shut our doors to the outside world.  And that doesn't just include accepting the doctors and scientists, we are a meant to be a land of opportunity for everyone who is willing to work hard to make a life here.

-To expand upon that last point, we are also a country of RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.  That means you cannot specifically target members of a certain religion to deny them entry.  I am a Christian, but even I recognize that due to the separation of church and state we cannot play favorite to Christianity and we cannot disparage members of the Islam or of any other religion. They have just as much right to live here and practice their religion as anyone else.

-And to expand upon THAT the explanations given for why we "needed" a travel ban seem phony.  I'm expected to believe we needed "increased scrutiny" even though your typical immigrant from a middle eastern country already faced 2~ years of procedure and faced scrutiny from half a dozen government agencies??  We we already using very rigorous and safe methods of screening immigrants, but President Trump was giving speeches trying to make it sound like quite the opposite.  If you would believe him it sounds as though we had opened the floodgates so that anyone and everyone could come in as easy as you please.  Those were lies.  He lied in those speeches and seems to continue to lie about the state of immigration.  It all looks like straightforward fear mongering to me, and to my chagrin it seems like many americans are too eagerly to buy into the fear and to take his words at face value.

-Sexual scandals have risen in attention and prominence in our country this last year.  Many seemingly untouchable celebrities have fallen from grace in the wake of their misdeeds.  But in stark contrast to this we see our President, who has just as many seemingly valid accusers as the rest and it all gets swept under the rug.  We deserve to know the truth about our president's sexual misconduct.  We deserve to not be lied to.


There are many other issues as well, too numerous to count.  But they mostly boil down to the fact that when Donald Trump speaks, more often than not he seems to be lying.  Not every time, mind you, but far more frequently than he should be.  And it is often things that are easy to fact check.


He said "For years, they have not been able to get tax cuts -- many, many years, since Reagan."
But that was a LIE.  We have had 9 major cuts since Reagan.


He said of the Charlottesvill protests: 'White nationalist protesters in Charlottesville "had a permit. The other group didn’t have a permit."'
That was a LIE.  The other group did have a permit.  This lie is one of many lies that seems to indicate a racial bias on his part.  Why else would your instinct be to try and justify the actions of violent white supremacists?

Not to mention the countless times he has claimed there was rampant voter fraud in the 2016 general election.  Despite these REPEATED claims there is no evidence of this.  Even in spite of a frivolous investigation into the alleged fraud.

The cherry on top of ALL if this is Trump's insistence that the media is corrupt and out to get him.  He is taking a militantly anti-media stance and It is not healthy for our country.  He is trying to give people a reason to not believe the horrible (but truthful) things that have been published about him.  The truth is the truth and facts are facts.  We should not compromise on this or be misled to to distrust the media.  And yes, sometimes there are factual inaccuracies that get reported, but these are often caught and corrected and stories are amended and retracted.  All in all the media is significantly more accurate that Trump himself when it comes to telling the truth.