I have been here about a week now and I’m not sure how active I am supposed to be!

Reading others posts is enlightening and exhausting, their rhetoric in many cases is not a substantive thing for Europeans and so much I see stems from a rather blinkered perspective of the world and how it has changed, but they are purely centred on their microcosm of life in a place that not many Europeans would be very welcome just now.

It is funny how less than it says “the land of the free “ isn’t very free at all, with just two political perspectives that are at each other’s throats. A dream that so many peoples from around the world rushed to in centuries before is now withheld from many in that land because they are viewed as being on the wrong side. It’s Union and Confederate cowboys and Indians all over again!

I think this invective is very saddening and doomed to falter in one political debate about making America great again! Sorry, but it’s how it all appears from the lands so many of your forebears fled from, and if they were around now they would be fleeing again I rather fancy.

Pretzel · 70-79, M

the "melting pot" has never really been one.
sure we had black people in our country - and legally enslaved them
not to long after black people were legally not slaves (although they were financially enslaved) - Chinese were imported to provide essentially slave labor to build railroads.

it is a land of opportunity and some of the richest people during the "golden age" were also called "robber barons"

and we have always been contentious.

the current rhetoric reminds me of pre world war 2 Germany.

I get your concerns - it is an interesting time. fortunately a presidential term only lasts 4 years - the current president can't currently be elected for another term.

hopefully life will calm down