"Make America Great Again:" not buying it
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The one-liner phrase that will probably go down in history as one of the worst campaign slogans of all time will be now president-elect's Donald J. Trump's motivation to lead this nation.
While these words may make up a good chunk of his vocabulary, along with "ban all Muslims," "bomb the sh*t out of them, nasty woman," and "deplorable."
Think about his speeches for a minute. How many times did that main phrase find its way out of his mouth, but without any plan of action.
That's why the majority of the people are worried about his presidency. We never got any answers in regards to how he's going to accomplish what he has promised the nation.
Now, yes, I do understand U.S. politics, and I know he can't do it alone. He has to be able to pass a bill through the House and the Senate, and on really big stuff, he has to get approval from us, the U.S. citizens.
But here's why I cannot stand by our president to be because of this phrase. Let's take a look at America through the decades, and see which one we would want to return to, making that above statement true.
We're living in the 2010s, but we're now more than half-way through the decade, so let's start there
2010s:
2016:
January: The International Atomic Energy Agency announces that Iran has adequately dismantled its nuclear weapons program, allowing the United Nations to lift sanctions immediately.
September: The US and China claim responsibility for 40 percent of the world's carbon emissions, both ratify the Paris global climate agreement.
52 law enforcement officers shot dead in the line of duty by Nov. 20.
2015
June: Charleston Church shooting
August: On air shooting in Virginia
European refugee crisis: Tens of thousands of people have tried to escape from Syria. Many are still trapped there, trying to escape their civil war.
June: The White House shows support for same sex marriage a huge step forward for the LGBT community in the U.S. The ruling that it should be illegal is overturned in the Supreme Court. Some states had already legalized it.
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Greek Debt Crisis
IRS Hacked
And... of course, our lovely 2016 presidential candidate nominees announced they were running.
2014
January: Colorado legalizes recreational marijuana.
James Holmes is sentenced to life in prison for the Aurora Theater shooting in 2012.
The 22nd Winter Olympic Games take place in Russia, and just months later, Russia invades Crimea, Ukraine.
In response to Russia's invasion of Crimea, NATO announces an end to cooperation with Russia.
The Islamic State is able to make tremendous gain in Iraq and Syria.
2013
November: Nuclear pact with Iran is created, reducing tension between Iran and the U.S.
November: A 16-day government shutdown keeps Congress from making laws for the country because the House, the Senate and the President couldn't agree on anything.
President Obama comes up with the Affordable Care Act, creating a plan to get more Americans insured.
2012
January: Iran undergoes an oil oil embargo.
November: Obama wins the Presidential Election and will serve a second term in office.
December: North Korea launches a long-range rocket, intensifying skepticism with the U.S.
2011
September: Occupy Wall Street demonstration takes place in New York.
September: President Obama proposes a more than $400 million jobs plan to try and get Americans back to work.
Arab Spring protests spur protests in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, among others. The U.S. applauds the uprisings in order to get powerful longtime rulers out of power.
U.S. forces kill Osama Bin Laden, the head figure of al-Quida
2010
April: BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico
May: Times Square Bomber—A catastrophic terrorist strike in the heart of Times Square was narrowly averted this May when 31-year-old Pakistani immigrant Faisal Shahzad’s explosive-packed 1993 Nissan Pathfinder failed to detonate and a street vendor notified police of smoke pouring from it. An American citizen who received $15,000 and explosives training from the Pakistan Taliban, Shahzad was subsequently plucked off a Dubai-bound airplane at JFK International Airport and was sentenced to life in prison in October, while warning of more attacks in the future.
July: Wikileaks starts releasing classified government material, making its founder Juilan Assange, one of the most sought out men for the American government.
August: Protests over the mosque at Ground Zero start just before the 9-year remembrance of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that rattled the nation in 2001.
2000s
November 2000: George W. Bush wins the U.S. presidency by a very, very narrow margin. Bush won Florida by a narrow margin of 527 votes. Bush won 271 votes in the Electoral College, while Gore held 266. Bush won the presidency despite losing the popular vote. (Flash forward to where we are in 2016, please. Just saying.)
September 2001: Terror hits the nation. Two commercial airliners fly into the Twin Towers in New York. Another crashes into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and one crashes in a field in Pennsylvania after it is rumored that plane is heading for the White House. President George H.W. Bush is reading to a group of children in Texas when he receives the news and reports back to watch with the rest of the nation as horror strikes.
October 2001: The U.S. military, along with its British allies, carry out an attack in Afghanistan, starting the War on Terror.
March 2003: Iraq invasion by U.S. military
July 2004: On Independence Day groundbreaking of the Freedom Tower begins at Ground Zero in New York.
October 2005: The War of Terror continues. With elections in Iraq to confirm a new constitution vying with internal terrorism amid the U.S. military presence on October 15, eleven days later a statement from the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calls for the destruction of Israel and condemns the peace process.
2006: North Korea Conducts it's first nuclear test.
October 2006: U.S. passes legislation to build a border fence between the U.S. and Mexico (sound familiar, at all)
June 2007 - A terror plot to blow up JFK International Airport in New York City is thwarted when four terrorists are arrested and charged with its plan.
July 2007 - The fifty star flag of the United States of America becomes the longest flying flag in American history after flying over forty-seven years.
October 2009 - The economic recession continues to deepen as jobless claims climb above 10.0%, reaching 10.2% with October's monthly figures.
1990s
August 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait, Gulf War begins.October.
1990: East and West Germany reunified.
January 1991: US begin Operation Desert Storm to stop Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.
May 1991: U.S. and Soviet Union sign Arms Control Treaty
1992: Official end of the Cold War
January 1993: Europe eliminates trade barriers and becomes a single market.
February 1993: World Trade Center bombing.
September 1994: U.S. invades Haiti to "restore order."
January 1995: World Trade Organization is established on Jan. 1.
1995: O.J. Simpson Found Not Guilty of Double Murder
September 1998: The United States Congress passes legislation, the Iraq Liberation Act, that states the U.S. wants to remove Saddam Hussein from power and replace it with a democracy.
1998: U.S. President Clinton Impeached.
January 1999: January 1, 1999 - The Euro currency is introduced as a competitive tool to stem the power of the dollar and maximize the economic power of the European Union nations.
August 1998:Attacks on two United States embassies in Africa, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya kills two hundred and twenty-four and injures four thousand five hundred.
April 1999: School shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado kills 25.
1980s
1980: Failed U.S. Rescue Attempt to Save Hostages in Tehran
1980: John Lennon assassination
1980: Establishment of CNN
1981: Assassination Attempt on the Pope
1981: Assassination Attempt on U.S. President Reagan
1981: New disease identified as AIDS
1981: Personal Computers (PC) introduced by IBM
1983: Reagan announces defense plan called "Star Wars"
1983: Soviets Shoot Down a Korean Airliner
1983: U.S. Embassy in Beirut Bombed
1985: Hole in the Ozone Layer discovered
1985: Terrorists Hijack TWA Flight 847
1985: U.S. Singers Record Charity Single "We Are the World"
1985: Wreck of the Titanic Found
1986: Space shuttle Challenger explodes
1986: Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster
1986: U.S. Bombs Libya
1986: U.S.S.R. Launches Mir Space Station
1987: DNA first used to convict criminals
1987: New York Stock Exchange suffers huge drop on "Black Monday"
1987: West German pilot lands unchallenged in Russia's Red Square
1988: U.S. shoots down Iranian airliner
1989: Berlin Wall falls
1989: Students massacred in China's Tiananmen Square
1989: World Wide Web invented
1970s
1970: Beatles break up
1970: Palestinian group hijacks five planes
1970: Kent State shootings
1972: Terrorists attack at the Olympic Games in Munich
1972: Watergate Scandal begins
1973: Roe vs. Wade legalizes abortion in the U.S.
1973: U.S. Pulls Out of Vietnam
1973: U.S. Vice President Resigns
1974: Terracotta army discovered in China
1974: U.S. President Nixon Resigns
1975: Cambodian genocide begins
1975: Civil War in Lebanon
1975: Helsinki Accords signed
1975: Two assassination attempts against U.S. President Gerald Ford
1976: North and South Vietnam join to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
1979: Margaret Thatcher becomes first woman Prime Minister of Great Britain
1960s
1960: The Birth Control Pill is approved by the FDA
1960: Walsh and Piccard become the first to explore the deepest place on Earth
1961: Bay of Pigs invasion
1961: Berlin Wall built
1961: Freedom Riders challenge segregation on interstate buses
1961: JFK gives "Man on the Moon" speech
1961: Peace Corps Founded
1962: Cuban Missile Crisis
1963: Buddhist monk sets himself on fire in protest
1963: "Hot Line" established between U.S. and U.S.S.R.
1963: JFK assassinated
1963: March on Washington
1963: Martin Luther King Jr. makes his "I Have a Dream" speech
1964: Civil Rights Act passes in U.S.
1965: Los Angeles riots
1965: Malcolm X assassinated
1965: U.S. Sends troops to Vietnam
1966: First Kwanzaa celebrated
1966: Mao Zedong launches the Cultural Revolution
1966: Mass draft protests in U.S.
1966: National Organization for Women (NOW) founded
1967: First heart transplant
1967:Six-Day War in the Middle East
1967: Three U.S. astronauts killed during simulated launch
1968: Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated
1968: Robert F. Kennedy assassinated
1969: Neil Armstrong becomes the first man on the moon
1969: Rock-and-Roll concert at Woodstock
1950s
1950: Korean War begins
1950: U.S. President Truman orders construction of hydrogen bomb
1951: Truman signs peace treaty with Japan, officially ending WWII
1952: Polio vaccine created
1953: First Playboy magazine
1953: Joseph Stalin dies
1955: Disneyland opens
1955: Montgomery bus boycott begins
1955: Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus and is arrested.
1955: Warsaw Pact signed
1957: Soviet satellite Sputnik launches Space Age
1958: Chinese leader Mao Zedong launches the "Great Leap Forward"
1958: NASA created
1959: International treaty makes Antarctica a scientific preserve
1940s
1940: Auschwitz opens
1940: Battle of Britain
1940: Franklin D. Roosevelt elected to an unprecedented third term as U.S. President
1940: Warsaw Ghetto Established
1941: German battleship Bismarck sinks
1941: Ho Chi Minh founds the Communist Viet Minh in Vietnam
1941: Japanese attack Pearl Harbor
1941: Mount Rushmore completed
1941: Nazi Rudolf Hess flies to Britain on a Peace Mission
1941: Nazis begin killing adults and children with mental and physical disabilities as part of their Aktion T-4 program
1941: Siege of Leningrad
1942: Anne Frank goes into hiding
1942: Battle of Stalingrad
1942: Japanese-Americans held in camps
1943: Italy joins the Allies
1943: Warsaw Ghetto uprising
1944: D-Day
1944: First German V1 and V2 Rockets Fired
1944: Hitler Escapes Assassination Attempt
1945: Division of Korea Into North and South
1945: FDR dies
1945: First atomic bomb tested
1945: Germans Surrender
1945: Hitler kills himself
1945: Nuremberg trials begin
1945: A plane crashes Into the Empire State Building
1945: United Nations Founded
1945: U.S. Drops Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
1946: Jews are massacred in the post-Holocaust Kielce pogrom in Poland
1946: Winston Churchill gives his "Iron Curtain" speech
1947: Jewish refugees aboard the Exodus turned back by British
1947: Marshall Plan
1948: Berlin airlift
1948: State of Israel founded
1949: China becomes Communist
1949: First non-stop flight around the world
1949: NATO established
1949: Soviet Union reportedly has atomic bomb
1939-1945: World War ll
1930s
1930: Gandhi's Salt March
1930: Stalin Begins Collectivizing Agriculture in the U.S.S.R.
1931: Al Capone imprisoned for income tax evasion
1931: U.S. Officially Gets National Anthem
1932: Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean
1933: Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany
1933: Assassination attempt on FDR
1933: First Nazi Concentration Camp Established
1933: Prohibition Ends in the U.S.
1934: Alcatraz becomes a federal prison
1934: The Dust Bowl
1934: The Great Terror begins in the Soviet Union
1934: Mao Zedong Begins the Long March
1935: Germany sssues the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws
1936: All German boys must join Hitler Youth
1936: Nazi Olympics in Berlin
1936: Rome-Berlin Axis formed
1937: Amelia Earhart vanishes
1937: Japan invades China
1938: Broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" causes panic
1938: Chamberlain announces "Peace in Our Time"
1938: Evian conference about Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany
1938: Hitler annexes Austria
1938: The Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht)
1939: World War II begins
1939: Einstein writes a letter to FDR about building an atomic bomb
1939: German-Soviet non-aggression pact signed
1939: Nazi's Euthanasia Program (Aktion T-4) Begins
1920s
1920: Harlem Renaissance begins
1920: League of Nations established
1920: Prohibition Begins in the U.S.
1920: Women are granted the right to vote in U.S.
1921: Extreme inflation takes over German economy
1922: Mussolini marches on Rome
1933: Hitler jailed after failed coup
1923: Teapot Dome Scandal
1925: Hitler's Mein Kampf is published
1926: First assassination attempt on Mussolini
1926: Henry Ford announces 40-hour work week
1926: Houdini dies after being punched
1929: The Great Depression begins
1929: Stock Market crashes
1929: St. Valentine's Day Massacre
1910s
1912: Sinking of the Titanic
1914: World War l begins
1917: The year the U.S. entered WWl
1919: Hitler Joins the Nazi Party
1919: Treaty of Versailles Ends World War I
1900s
1902: The teddy bear is introduced
1902: U.S. passes the Chinese Exclusion Act
1903: Wright Brother's first flight
1909: Plastic is invented
1800s
1803: Louisiana Purchase from France, making the U.S. territory larger
1815: Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, and was exiled to St. Helena
1820: Antarctica was discovered
!840-42: Opium War, China ceded Hong Kong to United Kingdom
1848: Mexican American War, U.S. gained the modern Southwestern U.S.
1861-65: American Civil War
1867: U.S. buys Alaska from Russia
1700s
1776: The colonies gain independence from Great Britain, becoming the United States of America
1765: The official documented start of the American Revolution. The war between the colonies and Great Britain lasted until about 1783.
And with that, my friends, I leave you to reflect on what Mr. Trump means when he uses that three-word phrase.
Let me be totally honest, here. I have not liked him from the start, and that's not likely to change anytime soon. But when I look back at the history of this nation, I cannot find a certain time, even a full year, when the U.S. was thriving like we all had hoped.
This nation was built on the fact that those wanting a better chance could come and get the help they needed. True, we're not perfect, and now the threat of terror has clouded our visions of working toward that "more perfect union," that was set forth for us and our now 240-year-old country.
My only hope is that our future president Trump (because I know the outcome of the election is not likely to change), continues to work for Americans toward that goal.