We’ll start this post at the top, with our president and his way of communicating with the American people.  His supporters call him “unfiltered,” his critics, “untethered.” Regardless of which side you’re on, it should be obvious to you that things are being said in public that weren’t said before.  Lines are being crossed and in some respects, obliterated all together.  Nothing’s off the table anymore.

In my opinion, Trump’s particular “brand” of leadership has lowered the nation’s discourse in a rather significant way.  Trashing other people is now acceptable and even appreciated.  Social media and the ability to hide behind a keyboard add fuel to the fire.  It’s now o.k. to broadcast hate as long as you can rationalize that the object of your disdain is somehow worse or different from you.

Here’s an example:  it’s Memorial Day, 2018, and we have a story in the Fayetteville Observer where a candidate for Cumberland County commissioner is posting charts on his Facebook page that compare Democrats to Nazis.  “It says both the Democrats and Nazis hate Jews, and adds that Democrats also hate white people. It says they both favor socialism, censorship and media mind control, and that both worship the government.”  The candidate defended the post as tit-for-tat.  “That comes out of Democrats all the time,” he said.

This is where we are in America in 2018.  Hatred and division is alive and well.  After all, the other side is doing it!

We’re presented with a choice.  We can choose to deepen these absurd divisions and continue on this trickling decline, or we can rise above it and move forward, together.

I hope you’ll choose to reject the hatred.  More importantly, don’t let it trickle down to you and your life.  Hatred may catapult immoral men into power for a short period of time, but it won’t last.  It never does.  Good men get in the way.  We’re celebrating many of those good men today.