Written by James Folk   

I do not hate Sarah Palin. I disagree with some things she says and does. There, was that so hard? I also disagree with Barack Obama at times and John Kerry and every politician in the country. However I do not hate any of them. This includes our former President George W. Yes I think he lied to get us into war and he ruined our economy and set our country backwards, but I do not hate him. I don’t hate him because hatred is toxic to oneself and our political environment as a whole. It marginalizes you and allows people to disregard what you say as “hate speech” even if what you say is true. Hate is what divides us as a nation, and it is time for us to remove it from our speech and from our hearts.

You could almost see Tucson coming. Its seeds were planted when Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about getting a BJ. That moment in history was the opening round of America’s current politically toxic environment. Clinton did himself in by lying about the whole affair and not stepping up and admitting what he did, however, republicans wasted millions of tax payer dollars to make the president look like a fool. They did this not because he started a war under false pretenses or say uncovered the identity of a CIA agent for political purposes. They did it because they didn’t like him and they wanted to humiliate him and remove him from office.

Then came the advent of Fox news and the most highly contested election of all time. Those two event helped divide the country even more. Our political environment started becoming solely about how different we were as a people and how those difference should make us hate each other. Afterall liberals want to turn this country into the USSR and conservatives want to hand everything over to our rich corporate overlords. These polarizing attitudes are great for ratings, but they are toxic for the growth of our country.

The hatred and anger that these attitudes generate was on display in Tucson this past weekend. The shooter probably felt justified in his action. Afterall Giffords was literally targeted by the extreme right wing as someone who needed to be removed from her position. Since they couldn’t do it through the electorial process, I am sure the shooter felt like he was serving his country by killing her. Such is the mindset that is developed from all the hatred and fear that is being shoveled by both sides into our living rooms. I say enough is enough.

No one is perfect and everyone has many flaws. It is time we started to relate to each other on a more human basis. Each of us want happiness and want to avoid suffering. In that way we are all equal. We need to start looking for and embracing our commonality if we are going to pull ourselves out of the abyss of negativity that our political climate currently resides in. The left wing cannot use this situation as an opportunity to punish the right. The right wing must take a good hard look at this situation and say to themselves, is this really what we want? Do we want to live in a country where political disagreements are solved with murder? I think we all know that violence solves nothing. Killing and murder will not make one side more right than the other, it will just make everything wrong. We need to learn from this situation and stop hating each other. We are all Americans and we all want what is best for our country. That is a new jumping off point that we all need to get to before this thing can be fixed.