On the Media- The Power of "Rigged"

The idea of this year's election being rigged is an idea that's been thrown around quite often, especially with Trump. This podcast discusses the word rigged itself and how different politicians have used it. An interesting part of this podcast is when the speaker talked about how democracy and equity are not the same; equity meaning something is fair and impartial. To me, I feel as if people often don't differentiate the two, saying a democracy should be fair and impartial, but that's simply not the case.

To have a fair and impartial democracy would mean our politicians wouldn't use the word "rigged" at all. This podcast mentions the different interpretations of rigged. When it comes to Trump, he believes the election is rigged because of voter fraud and media collaboration with the Clinton Administration. Trump has also mentioned that minority groups only vote for democrats, so he believes there's the power of rigged there as well. For Clinton, the speaker in the podcast discusses that she believes political power goes to the rich and powerful. No matter whether I think either is true, I think the word rigged can be applied to almost every aspect of politics, but I don't necessarily believe everything in politics is rigged.

Well Informed: Syria and Immigration 

Syria and immigration seems to be a tough topic to discuss because it's been a huge highlight in the presidential race with Trump and Hillary. It's also hard for me, personally, to take a side on this issue. Society within the U.S. is wary of letting in Syrian refugees because of the issue of terrorism and national security.

National security should always be a top priority, but that doesn't mean kindness should dwindle. The U.S. has been well-known to let in refugees and provide aid to foreign countries over the years. An article in The Atlantic caught my attention when the writer talked about this same issue and tried to answer the question: Can ISIS terrorists really infiltrate the Syrian refugee program?

The writer states the following:

As U.S. officials and refugee advocates point out, that has never happened in modern history. Not when the U.S. took in tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s. Not when 125,000 Cuban “Marielitos” arrived by boat in 1980. And not in the desperate aftermath of more recent wars in Bosnia, Somalia, or Rwanda. “Those fears have proven unfounded,” said John Sandweg, a former acting director of ICE who previously served as a top lawyer at the Department of Homeland Security.

I understand letting too many refugees in may pose a threat, but I also think it's important to look at the history of the U.S. and whether or not we've been successful in helping other countries. I think the U.S. will always carry a fear of helping out foreign countries too much, especially after 911.

Radicalization and Religion

Sadly, radicalization and religion is a current issue and probably will be for a long time. With radical groups like ISIS around, it's hard not to form harsh opinions surrounding certain religions. And we tend to get these opinions from what the media tells us. If you study the Muslim religion, it's actually a peaceful religion and members don't condone what groups like ISIS do. But the peaceful part of the religion is not what's talked about the most on social media, and it's typically what we don't learn from the religion.

I came across something interesting while reading an article What role does religion play in process of radicalization? The author mentioned "examples of religious terrorism can be found in all religious traditions. No single religious tradition holds a monopoly on violence and all religious traditions can be used to justify acts of destruction and aggression." I think that's what society doesn't understand, even myself, that some religious traditions can used to justify certain acts, but that's only in some countries. Some of America's society has greatly disagreed with the views of Islamic culture and religion.

Right now, we are not seeing a clear view of what other religions do that may seem radical, only what muslims do. And while I agree that radicalization and religion go hand in hand, I think we need to educate ourselves better on religions themselves to learn more about why radicalization happens.