America. Ya know, the land of the free, home of the brave? Well, that's what I thought it was until just recently. We are tricked from a young age to think everything in our country is all great and perfect. Then one day out of the red, white and blue you realize everything isn't always as "great" as it once seemed.

Honestly, from the start, America truly was not as beautiful as it is made out to be. As Columbus Day approaches, I began to wonder why we even celebrate a man who came across the Atlantic and killed a bunch of Natives. It doesn't add up. The only reason kids know the guy is because teachers drilled the year 1492 into our heads and he got us a day off from school. As the country aged it only got worse. We forced natives out of their homes and made them travel to live in crowded, unsanitary reservations. We enslaved Africans and made them live like livestock. Women and Africans could not vote. We arrested innocent Japanese people after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Immigrants were treated as lower class citizens (even though the people who lived here were immigrants in years past). We had segregation laws to separate people of color from those of a lighter pigment. We put a lesser value on a woman than on a man. We accused innocent Muslims as being terrorists. And they teach us all of this in history class so that it doesn't happen again. But in reality, it never stopped happening.

Even in the year 2016, our country is a parody of what it could be. And this parody is not a laughing matter. It is actually quite terrifying. Just take a look at our "top" presidential candidates. I have waited eighteen years to vote and my options are a criminal and a racist bigot. As well as the huge increase of heavy police brutality against unarmed men every day. The fact that we need to have protests in the 21st century to remind Americans that Black Lives Matter is appalling. Not to mention, black on black crimes on top of the black people being killed by our "protectors". The KKK has dreams of rising again. On top of all this, we now have this crazy killer clown craze swarming the East Coast. People are scared to leave their houses because they might not make it back alive.

It's a shame that nothing has really changed to make our country better. After years of living like this, why hasn't there been a change? The generation before us is not to blame and neither are we. We must put an end to the ignorance. I'm not saying America is a terrible place to live, but I am saying it is nowhere near as great of a place as it should be.