I tend to stay away from whatever is happening in the media. Don't mistake that to mean that I'm not very aware of what is going on, but I don't think it's something that I should typically get involved in. I'm an author. Whether you're on my website or one of my social media pages, you're there because you've read my books, or I've read yours. Those pages are there for my business, not for me to state my opinion on every political matter we face.
But as we end a week that began with our country celebrating its independence, and with all that has been happening, I don't know how to stay silent. I was up most of the night shaking over it all.
I hurt. My heart hurts.
When did we become this, and how?
I see constant posts about how certain lives matter, whether they're black or blue or LGBT. Why don't we all? Because when you single one out, don't you realize that your hate or your fear for another begins? Don't you realize that you are putting blame on a group of people, and your children are seeing this? This country as a whole is raising our children to see separate colors and separate groups of people rather than Americans.
How is this happening after how hard our ancestors worked to make us one?
We live in a country that is supposedly free, but every day we're working toward making sure that one day it won't be.
Freedom of speech? Only if you're for a "progressive" America. And by progressive, be sure that we mean "regressive", because by shutting people down and shutting them up for having a differing opinion, and by putting fear in people for just being, you are moving the country backward instead of forward.
The LGBT community want things to change so they can live freely ... then people in the media purposefully ask Christians what they think so that person will be socially crucified for their response. What did you expect them to say? They answered straight from the Bible. Did you wait to get the full statement? Did you ask if that particular Christian still loved the LGBT community? Because I assure you that the majority of Christians still do, but you won't hear that on the media. They only want you to hear what will make you hate Christians. They only want you to hear about that awful 2% of "so-called" Christians who protest and are so narrow-minded that I cringe just calling them Christian.
People are using the hashtags that black lives matter (and they do) but then they're following it up with bashings of police officers, or how they now need to fear all police. In the last year or so, there have been riots against police and police have been specifically targeted because of this. How is this okay? How is this a reality? There are bad cops out there, probably about 2% ... so now we're going to target anyone wearing a uniform because the media wants us to believe that police are targeting people of color? They're not, it's just those are the only stories you'll see in the news because it will incite more hate and fear. We're going to target the men and women (of all color) who keep us safe? And, yes, they do keep us safe. But the videos that you see online won't show that. The majority of the videos that go viral of police officers are of that 2%...
But then again, that is all the media wants. For us to focus on that 2% of the bad of every group-no matter what group it is. Because then we do this to each other. We tear each other apart and we fear each other and we become self-entitled. And we forget what it was like to just be.
Within my family and my neighborhood, I am surrounded by people. People of different colors, people of the LGBT community and people who are not, people who are law enforcement and people who are not, and people who are Christians and people who are not. And you know what? We do not fear one another. We love one another. We do not see each other as different groups, we're just Americans. We hung flags on Monday and we wore red, white, and blue.
Every life matters.