How Did America Turn So Mean?

So much for any unity or civility. I watched A clip from a Trump rally in my home state of North Carolina. “I’m not going to be nice,” Trump said. No surprise to me. A tiger doesn’t change its strips. It wasn’t Trump or his statement that bothered me. It was the meanness coming from the crowd. Here in the genteel south.

Last month I listened to the Supreme courts ruling about towns being able to tear down homeless encampments and prevent people from sleep outdoors in public places. Yes, no one wants people living outside, especially if it is next to your house or on your walk to work, but making it illegal to sleep outside without an alternative for these people is just mean. Now for a large percentage of our nation mean is Ok.

I can sometimes be mean. I was not very nice to someone earlier in the week. I thought about it and made amends the next day. Now I am working to try and help that person. I felt better trying to help than I did being mean.

I am dismayed when people I think of as half decent repost things on Facebook that are just mean. Then I read who else liked it and who else commented in the affirmative. These are people who would have died if they were considered anything but nice ten years ago. Now they are outright, publicly mean.

Why did this become acceptable. Just because Trump has talked this way for so long, should not give you permission to also be mean. Mean is easy, it’s lazy, it’s not smart.

I would like to bring back a little more public civility and a little less meanness. Tearing up an encampment of a homeless person just takes away what little they have. It just sets them back even further. It makes all the burdens of living without that much harder.

I would like to encourage anyone reading this to just try and be a little nicer for the rest of the year. I am going to try myself. That does not mean I won’t write about things I think are just wrong, but not in a mean or cruel way. Maybe it’s time America tried to be a little more like Canada.