nearmiddle

First, Some Facts Based on  top indicators of socioeconomic success — income per person and average education level, for instance - The United States ranks ninth in the world, bested only by the likes of Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Iceland, Andorra, Canada and Finland. We're a big, raucous, fractious democracy. It's understandable we won't score as well on some points as smaller homogenous centralized countries like Iceland.  Those countries all also enjoy low rates of gun violence, but the U.S. has the 31st highest rate in the world: 3.85 deaths due to gun violence per 100,000 people in 2016. That was eight times higher than the rate in Canada, which had .48 deaths per 100,000 people — and 27 times higher than the one in Denmark, which had .14 deaths per 100,000.  Deaths due to gun violence are rare even in many countries that are extremely poor — such as Bangladesh and Laos, which saw .16 deaths and .13 deaths respectively per 100,000 people. ...

At a New Years Eve party a friend asked, "Why are we all so divided?" We took turns making the kinds of comments that a cocktail party permits and each nodded in turn, but the question remains. Why? On this site I'm going to think about some of the complex problems we face. I tried doing this on Facebook, but it only takes a moment until someone's mentioned Lewinski's dress or the insanity of our President. Most conversations do not offer solutions from different points, but why I'm wrong or why I am not fit to breathe American air. Honestly, I often don't know what I think until I've said it. I need space to think. This is it.