An Open Letter to my Community in which I live, work, and play

The heinous event in Arizona yesterday is re-opening wounds in our society that were never really closed. Whatever your religious or spiritual persuasions may be, now is the time to pray, meditate, or pause for silent contemplation.

Mainstream America is suffering right now. Suffering because we need answers to this horrible tragedy. Know why? Because WE are wounded. Fellow mainstream Americans died without provocation or cause. Very good people died; very good people were wounded, some seriously. The government ‘of the People’ and ‘by the People’ reached out to some of its constituents to engage in discourse. They were viciously attacked and now we want justice.

But we also want to fix it. We are a people rich with opinions and ideas; always have been. In fact, there were many ‘clashes’ of ideas and opinions this last campaign cycle. And, there is little doubt that it was the most vitriolic in recent history. Many icons were used to implicate separatism, dub some as traitors to America, needing a revolution, or out right racism. Many people used icons from our Founding Fathers to further their conservative cause without understanding the very origin of these symbols, or more importantly, what they mean to us today. There was at least one pseudo journalist that cried on national TV, claiming that the America was dying. The very notion that any mainstream republican or democrat has been disloyal to the US Constitution is very offensive. I personally know many elected officials on both sides of the aisle and can attest to their strength of being an American.

Also, all of this happened at a time when more people can easily become engaged in the political process due to the Internet. So, all in all, it’s quite easy to see why many people can point to sarah palin and others as to the cause of inciting more anger. The simple fact is crosshairs and politics don’t and shouldn’t mix. Period. But this is only symptom of a larger problem: the dialogue in our political process has rapidly polarized to us vs them. That is, ‘us’ are the good Americans, and ‘them’ are the disloyal patriots. We must learn to agree to disagree without being disagreeable. I challenge both our schools and our leaders to continue to mirror the behavior we want. We can openly debate our issues. But, when decisions are made by either our leaders or the voters, we must be satisfied that the process, our American and democratic process, worked.

Unfortunately, there is still a lot of hate, anger, and distrust amongst our society. And, that still needs to be addressed. So, pray, meditate, and/or contemplate. We have a lot of work to do. Together.