​The 12th annual "Stress in America" Survey by the American Psychological Association has revealed some interesting trends among young Americans belonging to Generation Z.  Those between the ages of 15 and 21 are apparently most stressed out by the issues that receive the most attention by news outlet.  Top stressors in 2018 for Gen Z were the high-profile issues of gun violence and sexual harassment.  Young Americans were also more likely to say their mental health is subpar and seek help.  These, and other findings, make sense.  Generation Z is, after all, thoroughly saturated in one form of media or another throughout most of the day thanks to smart phones and social media.  As such, they are exposed to distressing events from around the world on a regular basis while they receive their news by the most personalized and immersive means possible.  Although these findings are interesting, the reality that youths are more likely to express their feelings and seek out help is more important.

​US President Donald Trump called for civility and unity after several Democrats received packages containing homemade explosives from a man who happened to be a Trump supporter.  Although Trump’s attempts to appeal to common decency and the common good were a positive move in turns of outreach, he also placed much of the blame on Democrats and the media for creating a negative political environment, thus tainting his constructive message.  In turn, the majority of professional media outlets focused on that part of the President’s statement and his divisive nature.  In essence, the President and his critics simply blamed each other instead of leading on the issue and taking responsibility for the current state of politics.  This exchange then continued after a Right-wing shooter killed eleven people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.  The pattern demonstrates the failure of social leaders to learn what they need to cultivate civility and unity.

​The Democratic Republic of the Congo faces its tenth Ebola outbreak in forty years.  Although just over a hundred people have died from the infamous disease, which causes nightmarish symptoms that are highly lethal, and the World Health Organization does not yet consider the recent outbreak to be a global threat, the disease, which propagates via the bodily fluids of the infected, can quickly spread without proper containment measures in place.  Not only is the Democratic Republic of the Congo riddled with poverty and violent rebellion, it lacks much of the civil and healthcare infrastructure needed to provide the sanitation needed to stem an epidemic.  As demonstrated by the 2014 Ebola Outbreak, Africans, who hid the bodies of Ebola-infected relatives, fear ulterior motives at work while there is a curious disconnect between the International Community and the plight of Africans.  Today, the same issues are in play, but the Trump Administration’s preference for weaker government interventions and minimal international engagement adds a new dimension to the unfolding threat.

​On October 12, 2018, around 160 Hondurans from the infamous town of San Pedro Sula decided to ban together for safety and head toward the United States.  Soon, their numbers started growing.  By the time the so-called Migrant Caravan had reached the Mexican-Guatemalan border and pushed beyond several attempts to stop the mass of people, somewhere around 7,000 individuals had joined the original group.  Their apparent objective is asylum and opportunity in a foreign land.  Unfortunately, their trajectory sets them on a collision course with the US-Mexican border and a hostile political climate.  Immigration is both a domestic and foreign affairs issue that has plagued the United States for decades.  By reducing the Migrant Caravan to a question of US policy, however, pivotal insights about mass migration are missed and opportunities to solve the humanitarian issues driving mass migration are lost.

​Education is one of the most important sets of social issues.  Whether it is used as part of an election platform or the focus of a public policy initiative, education is a key service of civil society.  Not only does the quality of an education impact how well individuals can function in society and the workforce, education determines the capacity of a society to engage in civil discourse, which is particularly important when a nation is under the rule of a democratic government.  In recent decades, as technological advances have made it necessary for people to become far more technically proficient and the globalization of the economy has forced citizens of all countries to become far more skilled in general, there have been numerous efforts to reform the public education system.  For the most part, there is consensus that the public education system needs to change, but there is great disagreement over how dysfunction public schools revived and the overall education modernized.  A great deal of the problem seems to be that people do not have a common understanding of what makes an education an education.