First of all, everything has become tremendously expensive. This might sound strange, but when I eat, I am less susceptible to give into distractions, so when I study or do homework, I like to keep some snacks around. Yesterday I noticed that we were completely out of snacks, so I went grocery shopping. I went to Safeway and picked up various packs of snacks ranging from chips and Cheese-Its, to pop-tarts and Dole fruit cups. When I proceeded to the check out, I had less than ten items, yet I had to pay over eighty dollars for them.
Then, just spending an hour watching the news while I was waiting for the tire shop to rotate and balance my tires, I realized that the country is facing an array of problems. The first issue that CNN discussed involved the question, are we protecting our borders or racial profiling? Apparently, the Los Angeles Police Department has begun to map out Muslim communities in the Los Angeles area. The police department has argued that the project is geared at “helping Muslims avoid the influence of those who would radicalize them” (CNN). In my opinion, this is a clearly false premise, and an insufficient reason to map out and monitor Muslim communities. Although the department has argued that they simply want to map out the community based on demographic features to figure out who lives there, I believe that the mapping is based solely on religious affiliation, and is thus quite intrusive.
The next story on CNN focused on the ongoing controversy involving immigration. The story’s main concern seemed to be whether our current process of dealing with immigration creates an underclass. I believe that it does because the government does not provide illegal immigrants with a path to legalization. Many illegal immigrants travel here with their children. Those children who come here when they are maybe three years old are going to have a lot of problems when they grow up in this country. They will get thrown into an economy where they can’t get a legal job, and are thus more likely to end up in poverty. We should change the way in which we enforce our immigration policies so we allow the possibility of upward mobility for those young people. It’s apparent that our country is dealing with a variety of problems, and has a lot of work to do to maintain our economy, and the concepts of justice and equality as well.
