Post Alpaca Lips Posts

Photo by   Silas Hao   on  Unsplash First published on Medium . . The legislative process, where ideas to improve society and democracy go to die. The political process is necessary, but insufficient. Our democratic institutions are restrained and compromised for various reasons. Some of the restraints made more sense when our Constitution was initially developed. However, our democracy was undermined and compromised by slavery. The southern slave states got more than our future bargained for. . The enslavement of millions created the byproduct of states’ rights, an individual-rights constraining aberration, and abomination. Although the   separate   states do provide some vital restraints on the federal government, it is hard to disentangle their benefits from the exaggerated value put on them by slavery, and the many internecine disruptions states’ rights loosed on our future. . T he Civil War was a terrible event, and states’ rights was the   catalytic converter   that made it possi

The Whiteout Story   (Photo by   Yoann Siloine   on   Unsplash ) First published on Medium . . Almost every tweet, post, meme, story, essay, podcast, video, TV or radio program seems to point out, and complain about the bad things white people have   allegedly   done and do to blacks, latinos, American Indians, and others. I am here to say we whites are not responsible for everything wrong with this nation. That said, the 96.61% to 99% we are responsible for, still do not get enough consistent attention in the ways they should. . Yes, it may seem like liberals talk about people of color all the time now, but Trump, a white person, made sure racism, xenophobia, etc. were going to stay high atop the national agenda the last five years. Otherwise, like nearly every topic of importance brought up before Trump, those issues are whitewashed from the national conversation within weeks of a specific   event , or crisis. Of course, to a large extent the media-frenzy intensity, rise and fall, is