These candidates running for President make me want to embrace anarchy. I am a peace-loving gun control advocate who won’t harm a fly, but all the shenanigans have me wondering if I need to arm myself, train for battle and join a revolution.

I’m tired of these oppressors who crap their pants over the possibility that they may have to share power with another race or the other gender. I’m tired of tribalism—the complete and utter bigotry that leaves no room for other cultures and orientations. I’m tired of the mass cultural hallucination that says my god is bigger than your god, and you will do as my god says or suffer the consequences. I’m tired of the media hype that adds horse manure to both sides of the fence, facilitating the fearmongering and causing the fear and hatred to escalate with a pathetic lack of understanding.

I am always hearing that people who advocate for the world’s minorities are Anti-American. What’s Anti-American to me is xenophobia, rallying against the separation of church and state and trying to deny freedom, dignity and justice for all.

Yes, there are certain ideologies and behaviors we can’t embrace, but for the most part, I don’t mind sorting through information with people who see it from a different perspective. I have learned so much from people I respect who fall into that category. What does it say if I like and welcome only people that look like me, people who share my culture, my ethnicity, my religion? People who agree with me and think as I do? How narcissistic have people become really?

There is nothing wrong with wanting to secure our borders, nothing wrong with wanting to improve our immigration policies. Why must this go hand in hand with racism, misogyny and every kind of phobia that exists? This medieval logic would make America the enemy to the rest of the world, and rightfully so.

Arguments have surfaced that we should care for the homeless vets first. While it’s not an “either or” situation and doesn’t have to be, the reason for homeless veterans must be considered.

Our vets face complicated issues like PTSD, traumatic brain injuries, and addiction. They need help. Yes, let’s get them help. We have a failing mental health system, absurd drug policies, crazy laws, and a judicial system that needs an overhaul. But helping everyone always seems to interfere with someone’s greedy agenda.

What I want to know is this. Why are political platforms one extreme or the other? What’s happened to balance and compromise? Why is it so difficult for people to work together?

It’s not black and white to me. There’s a lot of gray.

It’s hard for me to understand the childish mentality that says I will not help you because of what you represent, because you are the enemy, because my need to be right and in charge is more important than what’s good for the people we serve, for the greater good.

These politicians seem to have forgotten that they serve the people not themselves, not their personal or religious agendas.

They are talking about hair, fingers, and penises, for fuck’s sake. Yes, they are children. And they want to lead us.

I’m sure the latest tragic terrorist attack in Brussels reinforces to some, that we should have Trump in power, though he has not been able to do anything but escalate all this fear and hatred. Ask him, please, what do the black people have to do with this, since he needs the support of racists? What do women have to do with it, since he needs them objectified and disrespected? And gay people? Why do anti-gay people need to be consulted for supreme court justice nominations? Because he’s determined to oppress all of these people, too. That’s why.

But for that matter, what do innocent Muslims even have to do with those attacks? The same thing white Christians have to do with mass school and movie theater shootings, I suppose, but they are in no danger of being banned anytime soon.

It’s easier for candidates to scare people into thinking Muslims will destroy us all, even though there are over a billion Muslims in the world who would have banded together to destroy us already if they had been so inclined. Since they don’t seem to be, I suppose the fear-mongers are going to make those people feel unwelcome enough and oppressed enough to consider it.

It’s become all about the immigrants, when plenty of ISIS members have Western passports or can easily acquire them. It’s become all about the immigrants when our very own citizens commit plenty of horrific crimes on their own.

Conservatives insist that political correctness is destroying our country. Because not being able to insult women and minorities and discriminate against them is somehow a threat to their very survival.

And when these people say they are just expressing how all of us feel, they seem oblivious to the fact that at least half of us (and hopefully most of us) don’t feel that way. Perhaps they believe that because of the company they keep, but political correctness is not destroying our country. Hate is, and I’m sure selfish, narcissistic greed is right there alongside it.

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”―Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.”―Malcolm X, By Any Means Necessary

“All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.” ― John Steinbeck

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”―Isaac Asimov

“The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”― John F. Kennedy

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.”―Karl Marx

“I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. These two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.”―George Carlin

© Copyright March 16, 2016 by Kyrian Lyndon at kyrianlyndon.com. All rights reserved. No reproduction permitted without permission.