not-kcrow

[not-kcrow]

Are We the Bad Guys?

This short book is not only trying to tell you the truth of our nation’s history and present, but to talk about why we are so divided, so hateful, and urge you to not blindly believe the things that are presented to you.  America has always been portrayed as the hero, ever since we fought the British and liberated our lands, when we intervened in world wars one and two. Yet, we forget that during the revolutionary war, we enslaved and raped the Negro slaves. While we were expanding into the west we were killing and converting the native populations in that area. We have perused racially motivated attacks against the Negroes, the Chinese when they immigrated over, the Mexicans, the Spanish, the Jews (even while we were protecting them from the Nazis), the Japanese during World War II and how we put the Japanese population in concentration camps, exactly what the Nazis did to the Jews, minus the killing and the torture. We have hated Indians, Muslims, practically everyone who wasn’t white, rich, and somewhat conservative.

The country was founded in the late 18th century. It wasn’t until the 19th century that we made slavery illegal, it wasn’t until the early 20th century that women obtained suffrage, and it wasn’t until the late 20th century that the 1964 civil rights act was passed(I remember being taught that slavery wasn’t a bad thing, and that Martin Luther King Jr. - a civil rights activist for black people -  was killed by an “African American man who liked segregation and hated Martin Luther King Jr.’s way of thinking. However, people were killed, tortured and raped during slavery, and Martin Luther King Jr. was actually killed by a white man).  Yet even after all of this, in 2025, we are still attacking people, we are still committing all of this hate. And it isn’t just the racism that I have mentioned earlier, the country has faked reasons and made excuses to go to war with Vietnam and countries in the Middle East (in Vietnam, one presidency said that there was an “unprovoked” attack on a destroyer in International waters, however that incident didn’t even occur. In the Middle East, one of the Bushes said that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction, however that report wasn’t true).

January 6th, 2021. By the time this book reaches you, you might have heard of it as a “Day of Love”, which sounds completely innocent, joyful even.

It wasn’t.

January 6th had enraged Trump supporters -  incited by President Trump’s words - stormed the United States Capitol. President Trump lost the election in 2020, so he went on to call the election “rigged” and told the protesters to go over to where the electoral college was certifying the election. 5 people died as a result of the riot. After January 6th, it sparked the “largest FBI investigation” to date. PBS News says that, “More than 1,500 people across the Us have been charged with federal crimes related to the deadly riot.” However, NBC News reports that roughly the same amount has been pardoned by Trump. Trump pardoned the people that rioted for him, but removed the things and people that defy him. Not only is the Trump Administration removing books that don’t agree with them, (LGBTQ books and books about racism), but they also fire people for reporting the truth. The intelligence community said that MS-13 -  the Venezuelan gang - wasn’t being controlled by the Venezuelan government. After that memo, the Director of National Intelligence fired the top intelligence officials who were involved in the memo. However, they agree with the truth that they force people to produce, such as the FBI’s report, an agency currently under control by the administration.

Now, in this current presidency, we have unturned a stone that previously hid the growing corruption of this country. With the executive branch given too much power with the executive orders (the very same power that ordered the Japanese population to be held in a concentration camp), the constitution has been overlooked. It’s funny that the only time the constitution is mentioned is when they think their rights are threatened, including the possession of firearms. However, when actual constitutional issues are presented, such as the fact that even if we went to war with multiple Middle Eastern nations, the last time there was a congressionally approved declaration of war was during the Vietnam War.

Yet the branch that has been tasked to protect the constitution - the Judicial Branch - has been continuously overlooked. In the other branches, there are forms of the Judicial Branch in it, whether it is the Justice Department in the executive branch or the Judicial Committee in the legislative branch. Yet, the branch that has been tasked to provide justice has been sidelined for the other justice components in the other branches. We have seen that system not work out, as the Justice Department has been ordered by the president to stop an investigation into a criminal.

I choose to write this, because I feel like we are in a state of powerlessness. Despite the continuous protests that we stage across the country, the outcry falls on deaf ears as the government bans books, unlawfully deported migrants and lawful citizens, arrested elected public officials, including the Newark mayor and the Wisconsin district judge when they protest their actions, and removed the Associated Press from the White House, because they didn’t recognize the change from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The Press Secretary answered a question about removing AP News, saying that “Asking questions to the President of the United States in the Oval Office is a privilege, not a right.”(Reported by the New York Times). She glossed over the fact that the Constitution's first amendment gives the press every right to question officials. These actions were intended to instill fear into the people and create a state of powerlessness, yet the scariest fact of it is that it’s starting to work. Some people feel as if they can’t do anything. Yet, why should we just let these corrupt, overstepping leaders actively strip our country of our diversity, of our immigrants, of our research, of our universities, of our country? Ban books made to inform the people? Nazi Germany did a version of banning books by burning books deemed “Un-German”(Holocaust Encyclopedia). Now in the United States, Pen America has documented nearly “16,000” books banned in public schools across the country, targeting books about race, sexual identity, and sexual violence. The states ban the books so that they can keep you in the dark, just like I was. You shouldn’t have your opinions formed by others based on limited information. You need to know the truth, you need to know that this country is not perfect.

Now, no nation is perfect. Canada engaged in a genocide against the natives. The British colonized most parts of the world, and when the empire left they created a conflict with other nations with their division of the land (Kashmir, for example, has been divided up to China, Pakistan, and India, and there are still skirmishes and conflicts to this day), the French’s hate against Algerians, Germany and the Holocaust, China and the propaganda, North Korea and the confinement of its people. The list goes on and on of countries. The United States isn’t a perfect country, either, but we are not completely bad. We were the first nation to create a functioning democracy, the first country to have an elected president with checks and balances provided by the other branches of government, they opened their doors to the immigrants of the world who were attracted to the country’s rights and protections. However, it has recently felt like we ourselves are turning into the “bad guys”. Even if the policy changes every administration, it seems they follow a pattern of corruption. The Trump Administration is the peak (at least I hope it is the peak and there aren’t any worse administrations) of corruption, lies, and selfishness. The thing that unsettled me was that a war-fatigued leader of Ukraine, president Zelenskyy, was humiliated by President Trump and Vice President Vance, with Vance saying “When have you ever thanked the US government for helping you?” They said this to him while Russia slowly claws through the Donbas region of Ukraine, with the Ukrainian forces past their third year of fighting them.

Going back to the judicial part of this complaint, there was one incident when the Trump Administration completely ignored a judge’s order. It’s funny that the director of the FBI - who rarely attends daily briefings - says that “no one is above the law”, when they arrest the Wisconsin judge for obstructing the FBI, yet they look the other way when Trump commits crimes. It really feels like the country is stepping into an authoritarian era right now. Book bans, suppressed rights, and the administration completely ignoring the law as if it was a handbook for Presidency rather than rules.

However, the way that Trump won the election was maliciously smart. Trump appealed to America’s beliefs, especially after Obama got re-elected, tweeting that Obama isn’t from the country. Americans immediately saw him as a protector of the Old Guard, in a sense. They wanted Trump to protect them from the new changing world, and go back many decades. This, as well as 9/11 and oil, Trump used this to win the election. In the third election against Kamala Harris, Trump created his own social media site to further reach his voters. The app is called (ironically) Truth. When I previewed the app, I noted that no credible news was on the app, not even Fox News. There were many small, conservative news outlets on the app. Trump used this to show possible voters anything he wanted, make them think what Trump wants them to think. This tactic was successful in Trump winning both the popular vote and the Electoral vote, as well as winning every single swing state (In 2016, Trump won the Electoral College but not the popular vote)

However, I want to expand on something I mentioned earlier: The Old Guard and the New Guard, or conservatives and liberals, respectively. The thing is, conservatives weren’t always conservatives, and liberals weren’t always liberals. Youth plays a factor when we want our surroundings to change, but as soon as we get older we want to go back to the time we grew up in. For example, some liberals in the late 20th century would have advocated for equal rights granted to black people, but are skeptical when it comes to Transgender topics. Yet, age isn’t always the factor. Some people at the same young age lean to more conservative ways of thinking. Some think that the liberals are always right, or that the conservatives are always right, but both are wrong. There are certain things that should change and some that should stay. Yet that always conflicts, tradition versus ingenuity. The Netflix show, The Residence, is about a murder mystery in the White House. However, there was one moment when a butler wanted to entertain the guests, but the Chief Usher - or the head of the maintenance of the house - wanted for things to stay the same. In the show, there is continuous conflict between the Old Guard and the New, with some wanting to preserve the tradition, and others wanting to change the way it is. While the show is fictitious, it shows how complicated the conflict between the two ways of tackling ingenuity can be.

The conflict between conservatives and liberals can also be seen in the continuous segregations that not just our country, but the entire world has undergone. In the ancient times, it was the division between man and woman; the man would hunt for the food and protect the family, and the woman would tend to the child and take care of the house. Then, it was the social pyramid that we have constructed for our society, putting peasants at the bottom and royalty at the top, with various roles between the two roles. Eventually, it reaches the race and the sexuality of the person. In the United States, these changes were slowly undone, with the law against slavery, law protecting women’s right to vote, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet, we still find ways to divide us, most recently with the age classification, which gives names for people born in certain times. However, this amplified the conflict between the two opposing groups. Some people say, “These young kids don’t know what our generation has been through! We’ve had to do this and that!” and has resulted in people shaming the other generations. Older generations shame the young generations for their culture or ideas, younger generations ignore the older generations, and the shamed generations take it out on the next one. For example, Generation Z was shamed by millennials and older, so they turned around and shamed Generation Alpha for the things they watched, but I see it as a rotten thing, dividing us even further after we’ve gone through so much. The generations propel the division between the conservatives and the liberals, making them practically hate each other. Why do we have to hate each other over every little thing? Why is it that after we have fixed racism, we have found another way to divide us? “Why can’t we all just get along?” One black activist said to a police officer before getting brutally beaten. It’s almost as if unity is practically Un-American, even if the phrase on all of our currency is E Pluribus Unum, translating from Latin: Out of Many, One. Yet, even with E Pluribus Unum, we find ways to divide each other.

Yet, it isn’t just a conflict between the conservatives and the liberals. Most of it is white vs. black, and by black I mean every minority that isn’t white. From the times of slavery and the Jim Crow laws to the deportations that the South and Central American people in America are facing. Yet, I was verbally attacked by a hispanic (I'm mixed). When I was waiting for the bus, a hispanic woman came up to me and my family and said “I can’t stand these niggers! Especially these light-skinned niggers!” This hurt me especially - she didn’t know me, what I liked, what I did on a day-to-day basis, but she still said those things. But, she wasn’t white, so why would she attack a fellow minority? What I think is the answer to this is that the division between white and black has been cut so deep, so forced, that different ways of life were stereotyped for them. You can especially see it in New York City where - despite the heavy liberal presence - practically “zones” the races in their own areas. White people living in rich areas have a posh way of living, and the black community is a bunch of gangsters and hoodlums, living in the poor areas. The thing about America is that because of this division, there is no in the middle. Minorities either have to live like the whites or the blacks. The Hispanic woman who insulted me tried to paint herself as a white, conservative woman who hated black people. She is not the only person. There are other Hispanics like her who voted for Trump, saying that they wanted Trump to kick out the other groups of Latinos that immigrated to the country. The white people do not see the Hispanics as one of them, yet some of them try to lean towards that way of life. Up until 1964, America had been living in 188 years of extreme racism, including slavery and segregation.

Why then, do we have to divide ourselves so much? White versus black, Americans versus Muslims, conservative versus liberal, Republican versus Democrat, Gen X and older versus Millennials and younger. It seems that every election the people of America are on the brink of civil war. It’s almost as if we couldn’t live without some sort of division placed among ourselves. Segregating bathrooms, attacking other races, to serve what purpose? To feel better about ourselves? To be proud that we’re a class higher than the other? Why is it that we have to attack each other and hate each other this viciously?

I want you to think for a moment about the stereotypes or racist beliefs that have been taught to you by your parents or by your environment. As if we had some sort of factory setting, we’ve been taught to hate someone. No one is innocent of this, whether it’s black people, gay people, transgender people, Muslims, Jews, Christians, the list goes on and on. We need to understand each other, appreciate each other. No matter who told us otherwise, we are all the same. We should not be put to hate each other. We should not let people create more hate in and among our nation. Yet, try to tell people that we’re all the same and they’ll tell you you’re full of it. No matter how hard we try to tell people otherwise, they still are committed to their beliefs. Why? We surely can’t be bred to be hating machines, are we? No, because we’re not. Deep inside of everyone is a heart of compassion. Yet, it has been locked and hidden away by the racism and stereotypes we believe. It’s time to unlock your heart. Do not let someone program your thinking. Every single one of you knows that we are humans. It’s time to stop denying it.

One time, I heard a conspiracy theorist talk about the propaganda in our media. I thought he was talking about news like the New York Times, so I blew it off. However, after reading parts of A People’s History of the United States, I realized that parts of what he was saying weren’t completely false. On Instagram, even if the propaganda favors my political viewpoint, I still see it as propaganda. Some regular videos on my feed were filled with messages saying Trump is tearing the country apart. While - in my opinion - that was true, it is funny how these messages can reach across to you. When I opened the Instagram app, I was greeted with a “republican haunted house” talking about all of the “fears” that Republicans have, and a movie clip talking about how America is a dictatorship. These messages spread far and wide, in a similar way that Trump used his social media app to make his followers believe in his messages. And there’s that word, Belief. Belief versus fact conflicts on a day-to-day basis. Whether it’s party beliefs, religious beliefs, or political beliefs, these beliefs can interfere in fact. When one person chooses to believe in something, it’s hard to prove them otherwise. Your family, your community, your friends can influence your beliefs. Yet in such a turbulent time, you need to put aside your beliefs for a moment and pursue facts. Facts aren’t a liberal term, or a challenge to the Old Guard. Facts are facts. At the end of the day, neither conservatives nor liberals can deny facts.This book isn’t trying to sway you to one side or the other, but to pursue facts. Both sides of this do not want to be manipulated by one person, by one belief. No matter what side you’re on, there is no shame in asking questions and pursuing facts. They try to trick you into blindlessly doing their bids as they see fit. America is a country that should protect and inform the people, not trick and deceive them. So, no matter who you are, question the things they are teaching you, research it, make sure that you won’t be tricked or deceived. They try to deceive you by banning books in schools, so look beyond your school’s library. Compare sources on the internet with other sources, such as the Associated Press News, which takes news from all of the trusted news sources, and provides nothing but the facts, as well as the New York Times. Inform and take action for yourself, before someone acts on you.