the United States of America anymore.

We are fractured America.

We don't even speak to one another.

Citizens vilify other citizens.

We don't even talk at dinner tables anymore because we're afraid that that dinner is going to end up in a toxic environment and spoil the entire occasion that brought us together.

Hello, I'm Arlene Violet, (clapping hands once) and this is 'My Take' on the fracturing of America.

I'm a black person.

I'm white.

I'm Native American.

I'm Italian, French, Irish, Jewish, German.

I'm heterosexual, I'm gay, I'm transgender, I'm binary.

I'm not sure, but I'm all those things for certain because I'm a citizen of the United States of America and that is the country that has promised me that I have inalienable rights.

Margaret Thatcher once said, "This country of America is different from us.

Europe was founded on history.

They are the people that are founded on a philosophy."

I look at this country and it's sad to me that so many of us are really taking the gun to the other side of the equation because we disagree.

Citizens hate other citizens for no other reason that they don't think like they do.

They fight about politics, but it's not just a great argument where sides present sides and then they walk away as friends.

It actually has turned into alienation.

We are tearing down also the bedrock of principles in here, this fabulous country of ours, or what should be a fabulous country.

The Bill of Rights is under attack.

Take the First Amendment...

Journalists are vilified.

They're trying to ban books now in libraries.

Schools are subjected to a curriculum which really is whitewashed.

The truthfulness or the complete truthfulness of our history is not in fact taught anymore from the perspectives of the people who are sometimes victimized by American history.

So as I look at the United States today, regrettably, it's a really poor picture.

And we're also bad toward immigrants.

Back in 1886 when we got the Statue of Liberty from France, they gave it to us because they really believed that we would welcome those huddled masses, those poor, those tired people who are looking for a break in life.

But yet today, we vilify immigrants.

That's not the America that we're supposed to live in.

I hope that America can be turned around.

We need to go back to our basic founding principles.

We've got to stop fighting angrily with each other and get talking again.

We need to do less arguing and more listening.

Let's go back to the basics, can't we?

If we really want to make America great again in that full sense of the term, it's time for us to start speaking with each other and stop hating each other.

I'm Arlene Violet, (clapping hands once) and that's 'My Take' on the fracturing of America.

- Finally, a sneak peak.