Midterm elections showcase America's divisions

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A week of violence shocked the United States just days before the 2018 midterm elections.

An antisemitic attack on a synagogue in the state of Pennsylvania killed 11 people and 15 pipe bombs were sent to prominent critics of the US president. That, and a racially-charged shooting at a grocery store in Kentucky have the country on edge.

But, as the United States President Donald Trump President Trump is making a final push on immigration and the economy hoping to lead his party to victory, on Tuesday, he created a buzz about his plan to end birthright citizenship in the United States – a policy protected in the country's Constitution.

Nathan King, CGTN's White House correspondent, stated that typically only people in Washington, DC care about his divisive rhetoric, but there are real hot-button issues in the country and this anti-immigration push, especially in the last couple of weeks, is worrying a lot of immigrant communities.

President Trump has been doing the rounds, attending a number of campaign rallies to fire up his base. Jennifer McCoy, a professor of political science at Georgia State University, said that President Trump is using the same strategy that he used in 2016 because divisive and polarizing language is good for elections in general.

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“But using such vilifying and demonizing types of language, that's causing a lot of fear,” said Jennifer. President Trump is dividing the society into “us-versus-them” camps and that's negative for democracy in general.

The so-called "caravan immigrants", that have been a major story for the past few weeks, are a small group of people from small Central American countries such as Guatemala, EI Salvador and Honduras who are fleeing the violence and poverty of the area.

Eric Bolling, a conservative commentator and host on the digital news channel CRTV, stated that the immigrants are a win for the President Trump, who was really strong on border issues and won a lot of support in 2016 for his intended policy of building a border wall and making Mexico pay for it.

“Immigration is not an issue for Donald Trump,” Eric said, “Illegal immigration is an issue for Donald Trump.”

According to the data from the US department of Agriculture, during the 2016 US election, the top ten soybean and pork exporting states mostly supported Trump's Republican Party.

Election workers deal with early mail-in ballots for the upcoming congressional elections in Orange County at the Registrar of Voters in Santa Ana, California, US, October 30, 2018./VCG Photo

On the morning of the 27th, a shooting at a synagogue in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania left 11 dead and six injured, including four policemen. US media said “[it] may be the most deadly attack on the Jewish community in American history.”

This is just one of the issues that will affect the midterm elections, but Nathan believes Trump wants to get back to immigration. But all these issues have one thing in common: They all spread and caused controversy on social media.

“Social media, and the fact that we simply don't have any common source of news and information that we all can agree on anymore, and we're hearing very different stories,” said Jennifer.

Rhetoric is extremely important, but rhetoric that intentionally plays on people's fears and anxieties will inevitably push people too far.

The Heat with Anand Naidoo is a 30-minute political talk show on CGTN. It airs weekdays at 7:00 a.m. BJT and 7:00 p.m. Eastern in the United States.