This has to stop.

Hate speech, cloaking itself in Free Speech.

Calls to “arms” against each other.

And then the “arms” become real.

Pipe bombs. Shootings.

Are we a perfect society? Of course not. Are we populated with negative thoughts against others? Yes. It is part of the human condition when a lack of knowledge and understanding manifests as fear and dislike.

We have always been this way. So what is different?

An angry society was given a target for its anger. Immigrants, political parties, the media.

The rhetoric we are spewing, the ease of spreading hate through social media and the oblique permission to do so was granted us during the last presidential election.

Social media apparently makes users feel just anonymous enough to spew whatever they want. Would they do the same face to face?  Who knows.

These people who have committed heinous acts against others are, according to psychologists, disconnected, disenfranchised people who already had violent tendencies. Now, in this climate, they feel they have permission to act on those tendencies.

No longer do we campaign on platforms of what we will do if elected. We campaign with personal attacks, vitriol and divisiveness.

This is the opposite of what we need as a country. We need to come together, discuss different opinions and arrive at consensus.

We have become a society of  Lemmings. We accept what we are told without investigating for ourselves. Our social media is controlled not by us, but by algorithms that respond to what we read and filter what we get to read. Consequently, we only see one position. Without intentional research on our part, we will only ever get one side of anything on social media.

We are told a political party is “bad” because of such and such and we paint every candidate with the same brush.

We threaten our politicians if they don’t vote the way we want.

We make claims with no factual basis.

We get upset that media coverage of the pipe bomber overshadows coverage of rallies for the GOP.

Who are we?

We claim the current caravan is not an humanitarian crisis but a clever ploy organized by a political party as a cover for middle eastern terrorists to enter the country even though none have seen anyone of middle eastern descent in said caravan.

We need not fear terrorists getting in. They are already here … in the mirror and in Washington.