Puritans...Are they still here?

I am glad I'm not a Puritan, no offense to anyone. They're just too strict and  contradict everything they believe in. A good example of their contradiction could be the fact that they drank so much beer yet they believed that drinking beer was a sin. You can not do something that is supposedly oh so un-godly in your culture and turn around and try to blame someone else for it. Makes no type of sense. I guess we still see this in our present world because drinking alcohol underage or drinking while driving is still considered breaking the law. There are alot of people who drink alcohol  just like the Puritans.
Another thing that caught my attention was the influence of adultery. Just like in Scarlet Letter, adultery is still considered a crime in some states. For example, in Minnesota, if two people commit adultery whether they're both married or not, both of them are charged with no more than a year of imprisonment or are fined with no more than $3,000. It's not as bad as having to wear a red letter on your dress for the rest of your life but being in prison for something you knew was wrong in the first place.
This brings me to something else that the puritan believed in. They believed that if a child cursed their parents that that child could be executed. Wow, so you're being killed for cursing your parents. Once again, it is wrong but that punishment is way too strict. Nowadays, if you curse your parents, you get slapped, put on punishement, but not killed. The government doesn't really care about things like that. Kids will be kids.
 I guess Puritan belief is still depicted in everyday life but the rules now are so much more lineant.

Bubbling in a Circle = I am an American.

You would think in grammar school that I would fully understand that I was an American since we always had to sing the National Anthem and recite the pledge. But, It didn't register. Honestly, I don't even know the exact moment that I fully understood that I was an American. If I had to go back to my 1st grade self, I would probably say it was when I took my first ISAT test. I think that's 1st grade...Anyway! So, you know how you have to mark your ethnicity? Well I couldn't find 'black' on the list. The only thing that related to me was African-AMERICAN. I bubbled it in.
Learning about slavery from that point on and how slaves got to America made everything so much easier and understandable. I already knew I lived in America but I thought my race was just black. Thats how I referred to it and thats how everyone else referred to it. I then knew why I recited the pledge and sung the national anthem.
I fully understood why every November on a tuesday I ended up at the park field house down the street from my house and why all the adults looked into those little box thingys, a.k.a., Voting. After finding out I wasn't just black but actually African-American, I started to recognize the fact that I was an American. For example, I started to notice how America is a mixture of all cultures, a melting pot. I started to relate the school systems from other countries to the ones I was used to. Most importantly though, I took my history and related it to what my culture consisted of now and saw the ideas from Africa mended into the rituals. A big one, Church. At my church, you can see the African influence.
The signs were around me the whole time but I realized I was an American from bubbling in a circle.

Is it really that serious?

First off, situations so bad that it results in any kind of death is unneccesarry. Sometimes people act like they can't just talk things out and find a reasonable solution. It's not that hard. If two groups have differences then just don't talk to each other. Wa-Bam! Problem solved. I can't really think of a specific situation that depicts this point but I can think of several situations that all happen for the same reasons and they are all GANG RELATED.
My Goodness. I get so tired of watching the news and hearing that some kid got shot because of a gang break-out. Sometimes the kid might even be an innocent bystander. Its so sad and gangs are so pointless. Gangs supposedly have territory which is so innaccurrate. An unauthorized group of people can not own or be over a neighborhood just because they say so or because they live there. Makes no type of sense whatsoever. If someone from another side of town or someone who is apart of another gang comes on or anywhere near this territory, the only way they can solve problems (even though there technically isn't one) is by fighting. You see, gangs make their own problems. Why are you yelling "Westside!" and "Southside!?" Because you live on that side of town? Ok...so live there and shut-up. That is no reason to even have an arguement with anyone from opposite sides of town. You can't step foot on this side of town if you're apart of a certain gang so lets fight. Fighting almost always ends up horribly. Most of the time they have weapons, the famous one being the gun. I hate guns. They take away a life of 17 years in less than a second. Why can't people just settle conflicts easily! Ughhh. It's so unneccesary. It doesn't even sound right. "Oh yea so he died because he's from the westside and he came to the southside and walked down the street so we shot him." Smart. Noooo! Okay, Im finish. This is upsetting me.