Spectrum

Linda Tirado, author and activist, has written and spoken around the globe about what it's like to be poor in America. She now has a new project. She is seeking truth about our democracy by traveling the country and interviewing voters in the last Presidential election to find their current reaction to the Trump Administration and to the apparently stalled Congress. Tirado is finding that we have groups of disparate people living in the same geographical country but most people no longer having common goals or purposes. She contends “factionalism” has never been this bad. She challenges whether we even have a “country” beyond geography. This great divide is breeding danger: increased violence and a rise of the American style of fascism, according to Tirado. She notes that reporters, just doing their job, are not safe and that far right-wing political people blame the news media for spreading lies and “fake news” as is trumpeted by President Trump. She cites the recent assault on a reporter covering the Mon