Carrie+C’s+Final+AmEx+Speech+2016

=**A Fool's War**=

Trump. Cruz. Sanders. Clinton. Long ago, the four candidates lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the election of 2016 approached. For the past 485 days a war has raged in this nation; a war longer than the Spanish-American War, the Russo-Japanese War, and the Franco-Prussian War; the war between the candidates. This election has prompted an epidemic of immaturity by the nominees and a shocking rise in the frequency of lying to the voters, and is something to truly be ashamed of.

The focus of this campaign is no longer about the issues concerning our nation, of which there are many. Police violence. Global warming. The conflict in the Middle East. But instead of expressing their policy clearly and debating maturely like adults, the candidates choose to comment on things such as another candidate’s affinity to perspire frequently. To which the other candidate responds, “[you] don’t sweat cause [your] pores are clogged from the spray tan...Make America Tan again!" (I’ll let you take a guess which politician that was aimed at).

This election has prompted politicians to devolve into children. An actual quote from Donald Trump reads, “He started it.” The shouting between the candidates at the 10th republican primary debate even became so rowdy and unorganized that the person doing the closed captioning for the event gave up and just wrote “unintelligible yelling”.

Now, I could speak all day- and I’m sure many of you could too- about the incompetent things Donald Trump has said. Like this quote, taken from the 10th GOP debate: "I don't repeat myself. I don't repeat myself." Or how about, “I went to an Ivy League school. I’m very highly educated. I know words, I have the best words.” So I don’t want to get caught up in the ridiculous things Trump has said or done, because there are a lot. But just the fact that there is a CNN article titled, “ Donald Trump defends size of his penis”, tells you something is drastically wrong. “I guarantee you, there’s no problem,” Trump said. “I guarantee you.”

So thank god! Thank god our candidates are addressing the REAL issues! Thank god we can rest assured that Trump’s penis size is nothing to worry about.

But besides basic immaturity and incompetence, the presidential candidates have also lied outright to the voters. There exists a website called “Politifact” that accurately fact-checks every single statement that politicians make on a scale from true to false and everything in between. 78% of Trump’s statements and 73% of Cruz’s statements were found to be false or mostly false. So the man who very well may be the leader of our country is lying about 78% of what he says. But there’s another category on Politifact, and this is the “pants on fire” classification, which basically means that this lie is so outlandish that it’s astonishing that anyone even slightly believed it to be true. 19% of Trump’s claims are pants-on-fire level false. But don’t think the democratic candidates are perfect, either. Hillary Clinton was found to be lying 57% percent of the time and Bernie Sanders 30% of the time. And while these numbers are significantly smaller than the Republican figures, it is unacceptable in my mind that any person being seriously considered for the presidency be lying ANY percent of the time. These politicians have seemed to throw sincerity and integrity aside for the sake of garnering attention, and there is no excuse for this.

It would be bad enough if this election was an isolated incident, but it is not. The swirl of American politics has always been a spectacle. I’m sure some of you can recall the Drunk History episode we watched earlier this year where Thomas Jefferson calls John Adams a hermaphrodite during the election of 1800. Or how about the fact that In the election of 1828, Andrew Jackson's wife Rachel was attacked so viciously as a hussy that she had a heart attack and died before he even took office. So goes the saying, “politics is hollywood for ugly people”.

So I’m truly jealous of Canada, and I’ll tell you why. They recently had a 78-day election campaign, which was the longest Canadian campaign since the 19th century, and which one news reporter called, “by any means, grueling”.

But 78 days is really not that bad, Canada. Try 644 days of ceaseless immaturity and petty arguments.

So please, America, make it stop. End the bullying and the attacks and the lies. I want to grow old in a nation that doesn’t elect fools. I want to be 85 years old and happy with how America has straightened itself out instead of saying, “Wow, the election of 2016 was nothing compared to this.” I am disappointed in our politicians, and I hope you are too. Because I want to make America great again.

=Sources=

__ [] __

[|__http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/02/presidential_campaigns_are_beginning_far_too_early_the_permanent_campaign.html__]

[|__http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/republicans-blew-this-election-with-insults-immature-behavior/__]

__ [] __

[|__http://www.bgdailynews.com/opinion/our_opinion/presidential-candidates-should-rise-above-immature-mudslinging/article_31ce7b06-3905-5d00-a91c-774c628da9ac.html__]

[|__http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/03/politics/donald-trump-small-hands-marco-rubio/__]

[|__http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/29-wtf-moments-from-the-tenth-gop-debate-20160225__]

[|__http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-on-ted-cruz-spat-he-started-it-i-didnt-start-it/__]

__ [] __

__ [] __

__ [] __

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">__ [] __

[|__http://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2016-04-08/vicious-presidential-campaigns-are-an-american-tradition__]