PLANTING SEEDS encouraging violence, directly or indirectly, is
SO wrong–using the “divide and conquer” approach will
work in our country if we do not stay focused on what message we should be sharing . . .
we need to focus on:
-learning to communicate,
-learning to speak AND listen,
-respectfully exchanging diverse opinions
about important issues,
-listening to others with the same respect we want
for ourselves
-opening our minds and hearts
BEFORE opening our mouths

this is not easy and we need to work hard to exchange
OPINIONS and to remove the emotionally-charged,
insulting, rude words and degrading labels from
our speech

social media has often, unfortunately, driven many good
individuals to leave that medium because of the
hatefulness and intense judgements expressed by some
on their “friends” list and that decreases the number of
moderate voices being heard (I had an exchange the other
day with someone who had experiences with health care
that were the opposite of my experiences, but it did not
wind up with insults or harsh words. We just expressed our
opinions and we are still “friends”–this is as it should be – communicate, but don’t judge)

we do need to share our opinions and thoughts so that
we can come to better decisions about how we need to
resolve problems, BUT we need to review and improve
our communication skills FIRST and we need to remember
. . . we are ALL people, flawed perhaps, but people and we
ALL need to be heard in order for us ALL to live on this earth