Some Perspective on Our Political Division
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There is just one answer, our fellow Americans: Because we are being manipulated by outside forces. Big time! This is not just a gut feeling. We can, and will, prove this in this section (plus suggest ways we can make it all better).
Because the outside manipulation is so severe – and bombards us from so many different directions – it is super important we keep a levelheaded, even-keeled perspective on our situation. If we don’t, perpetual political division will eventually become a self-fulfilling prophecy that we cannot escape. Not to be overly dramatic, but we believe maintaining proper perspective is perhaps the only thing that can keep half of this country from saying “screw it” and just giving up on the other half.
Personally, we find it amazing we coexist as peacefully as we do. This country of over 340 million people represents a fabulous array of races, ethnicities, cultures, and religions. We are way – WAY! – more diverse than anywhere on the entire planet. There are over 370 religious bodies (i.e., churches, sects and/or denominations) in the United States. There were five racial categories to choose from in the latest census, plus a sixth category called “Some Other Race.” The Census Bureau codes 1,333 individual languages and language groups in America, a number so large they have to collapse them into a more manageable 42.
340 million people… 370 religious bodies… over 5 races…1,333 different languages. That is A LOT of people and A LOT of diversity. Still, with that many people and that many differences, there are relatively few conflicts. The truth is we all live among one another in relative harmony. Every violent crime is tragic, but the percentage of our violent crimes to our population is 2 percent. Think about that: 2 percent. We find that extraordinary!
We know this may seem like a strange thing to say in the wake of mass shootings, conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s murder, and an actual insurrection, but please hear us out on this because crime and violence are textbook examples of how those in power use scary topics to manipulate the American people – and if we don’t keep the bigger picture in mind, they will succeed.
On September 27, 2025, the Trump/Vance administration declared they were ordering troops to Portland – calling the Oregon city “war ravaged” – and named Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Oakland and Philadelphia as cities they intended to target. They did this even though violent crime in Portland decreased during the first half of 2025, including a 51 percent drop in homicides compared with the same period in 2024; Baltimore had the fewest homicides in the first half of 2025 than in any year since 1975; in August 2025 the Chicago Police Department reported a 23 percent decline in violent crime compared with the year before; homicides were down 32 percent last year in Oakland and dropped 21 percent in the first half of 2025 (equaling a 29 percent decrease in violent crime overall); Philadelphia is on track to have the fewest homicides it has had in almost 60 years; and the murder rate in Louisiana is almost four times higher than that of California (Louisiana had 19.3 homicide deaths per 100,000 people to California’s 5.1).
Crime and violence are scary, no doubt. Although the homicide rate was 17 percent lower in the first half of 2025 than the year before in 30 major cities, crime persists in many areas, causing plenty of Americans to feel unsafe. Because people already feel vulnerable and afraid, crime and violence are the perfect topics to weaponize – a tactic the Trump/Vance administration has taken to an artform, portraying predominately Democratic cities and states as lawless, depraved, and out-of-control… expertly exploiting anger and fear to intensify the growing divide between progressives and conservatives.
Don’t believe us? Then why did President Trump (who said “our once-great cities” have “blood-soaked streets” and that our “cities are rotting” and are “cesspools of blood”) deploy National Guard troops from the red-states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia to patrol perfectly safe areas of Washington, D.C. (a place he characterizes as a “rat-infested, graffiti-infested shithole”), even though Memphis, Tennessee has a murder rate roughly twice as high as our nation’s capital and cities in Texas, Ohio and Missouri also have higher rates of violent crime than Washington?
After many people made this exact point, President Trump announced that he would be sending the National Guard to Memphis after all. We guess he figured out that Memphis is actually the ideal place for him to stage the next act of his political drama since it has all the necessary ingredients: a majority black population, a black Democratic mayor, and is a blue city in a dark red state.
< COMMERCIAL BREAK: Creating crises out of thin air and abusing emergency powers in the name of cracking down on crime is not what healthy democracies do. It’s what authoritarian autocrats like President Trump’s new buddy president of El Salvador Nayib Bukele do. These guys turn the military on its own people to suppress dissent, empower corruption, and violate civil liberties in egregious ways.
That’s why one of the most fundamental – and critical – hallmarks of American democracy is that the U.S. military cannot, except under very narrow exceptions, be deployed on our own soil. Read more here.
Deploying federal troops to American cities for civilian law enforcement in response to completely fabricated “emergencies” is an outrageous violation of American democracy and the rule of law.
The actions of the Trump/Vance administration – which are being done against the wishes of state governors and without congressional authorization – corrodes civil liberties, destabilizes communities, stokes instability, escalates tensions, and erodes public trust. It is also highly damaging to our military, which has a long-standing history of being non-political and certainly non-partisan. Using the military as pawns in political games hurts morale and drives out experienced service members.
THIS CAN NOT BE NORMALIZED. Police states aren’t created overnight. They are created by citizens almost sleepwalking into them by slowly and quietly conceding their freedoms.
Judges around the nation obviously get this. In a harsh ruling against the Trump/Vance administration, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer pointed out that they are using “a top-down, systemic effort” to “create a national police force with the president as its chief.” Judge Breyer didn’t stop there. He also said that Trump/Vance officials “knowingly” and “willingly” violated the Posse Comitatus Act when they sent National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles in June 2025. Although the Trump/Vance administration claimed they federalized the California National Guard to “ostensibly quell a rebellion and ensure that federal immigration law was enforced,” Judge Breyer made clear the evidence didn’t support those claims in any way. After carefully reviewing the evidence, he concluded that “there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law.”
In Oregon, Judge Karin Immergut saw it much the same way. Judge Immergut eviscerated the Trump/Vance administration’s claims, saying that there was “substantial evidence that protests at the Portland ICE facility were not significantly violent or disruptive in the days – or even weeks – leading up to the president’s directive.” She continued, “The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.” Judge Immergut concluded with this: “This country has a long-standing and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs. … This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.”
Over in Illinois, Judge April Perry made clear that the Trump/Vance administration had a “credibility” problem, as their “perception of events are simply unreliable. I have seen no credible evidence that there is danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois. Deportations are up. Arrests are up… the courthouse remains open and always has. Federal laws are being executed… there is no evidence that the president is unable, with the regular forces, to execute the laws of the United States.” Commercial Break Over! >
As President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance continue their American cities have “blood-soaked streets” and are “rotting… cesspools of blood” crusade, it’s also important to remember that violent crime in America is concentrated among extremely small numbers of people. Research by the National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College found that 42 percent of homicides and 41 percent of nonfatal shootings are concentrated in groups representing less than 1 percent of a city’s population.
Knowing these kinds of facts matter, A LOT. After all, how can you develop a successful strategy for fighting crime if you don’t know who is committing the crime and how and where it is being committed? However, in the case of President Trump and Vice President Vance, facts don’t matter one bit because making our streets safer is not their goal. Scaring people so they can control them is.
The thought of being manipulated by the president, vice president, or anyone or anything else is disturbing, but the great news is that, now that we have identified the problem, we can fix it. There are several ways we can begin to fight back against this immediately.
The dragons that have exploited us can absolutely be slayed – not with lies, hateful words, vengeance or violence, but by remembering who we really are and shining light on THE TRUTH. Dr. Martin Luther King’s words have never been truer: “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
We must slay these dragons. Right now. As a nation – one nation – we must put a stop to this, because we cannot allow ourselves to be played any more than we already have been. We cannot let outside forces turn us into something we are not.