America's "New Era"

Our class's final assignment was to think of a name for the era that America is in right now. We have learned about our country's history and all of the past eras that America has been through, such as: the Civil Rights era, the Jim Crow era, the Reconstruction era, and many others as well. I believe it is hard to put just one title on the era we live in now because of the complexity of everything that has happened in the past few years, but I think I have decided on one: "The Divided Era". I thought this was very fitting due to the events in America in the past few years.     

Let's start off with 2019 and the beginning of 2020. The start of the COVID virus. This was the beginning of another big divide in our country. The whole country was on lockdown with people dying and getting severely sick. The country became divided because of people not wanting to stay inside, wear a mask, or stand six feet apart, and some people were very very strict about these rules. Then came the vaccines These corona virus vaccines became more of a political debate than a medical one. Liberals were more in favor of getting the vaccine to try to keep everyone safe, while Republicans were skeptical of the vaccine because of all the things our country did not yet know about the virus or the science of the vaccines. Whether or not you got the vaccine was a huge deal in America, and if you spoke to the wrong person, you might even get ridiculed for not getting it. 

Then next big divide recently was the BLM movement, or the Black Lives Matter movement. This started when civilian, George Floyd, got unjustly killed by white police officers while he was being arrested for apparently having a fake twenty dollar bill. The officer pressed this knew against George Floyd's neck and ended up killing him. This struck news everywhere and riots grew. People obviously saw this as a bad thing, and were determined to fight back. This began the BLM riots which led to many injured people and many deaths around America. It also started the Black Lives Matter organization which fights for the lives of African Americans who have been treated unfairly, specifically by the police and the government. Not everyone agreed with this movement and thought instead of "Black Lives Matter", it should be "All Lives Matter", and some people thought the BLM movement was too violent and ended up hurting more people than they helped. For the past two years, this has been a constant argument between everyone especially the police and BLM, and Liberals and Republicans.

 

I believe this nation is in it's "Divided Era" because of the countless arguments and differing political views that America has endured in the past few years. This is sad to see because we were once titled, "The United States of America" for a reason, and our country has destroyed it.