NAZARETH, PENNSYLVANIA — President Donald Trump declared upon taking office that the U.S. had entered a “new golden age,” but it doesn’t feel that way to a select group of voters from a state that helped deliver his victory.
The voters — men and women, young and old — were part of a 15-person focus group that came together on a frigid mid-January night in the battleground town of Nazareth, to dissect the state of the country’s democracy following one of the most divisive elections in American history.
Their outlook would prove to be a far cry from Trump’s triumphalism. Members of the focus group instead spelled out their anxieties about the fragile nature of the country’s increasingly polarized, anger-riddled and online experiment in self-governance.
“There’s too much hate in politics right now, and it just […]
This is an excellent article and the kind of journalism that we need as a country. It’s a shame that the author (or none of the participants, its difficult to tell) were willing to think outside the box. It’s clear that the two party system is a failure. In a country the size of the United States the concept that two political parties can represent 330 million people is ludicrous on its face. The House of Representatives has not been expanded in over 100 years. A country our size should be represented by several political parties, but sadly both Democrats and Republicans are so captured and corrupted that they will allow no alternative voices. Both of these parties work hard behind the scenes to silence alternatives, whether the tactic be voter purges, or law suits to prevent others from gaining ballot access. These actions are the behavioral manifestations of corruption to the core, because they represent an ideology of entitlement to power. Both Democrats and Republicans have become two sides of the same coin – corruption. I fear for this country. To quote Kennedy “Those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable.” Think outside the box.