As almost every American knows, unless you live under a rock, there was a mass tragedy in Florida yesterday. Seventeen lives were lost and fourteen others injured for no reason whatsoever. All because a very disturbed young man decided that he wanted to perform acts of pure evil. Where is all of this coming from? I am by no means a scholar or trained in this sort of thing. What I am is a logical middle-aged American man. A man who has fought against tyranny and cares about his fellow human beings regardless of the color of their skin or where they came from.
So I ask again, where is this all coming from? It’s coming from the mass media. Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC have seized our households. The media has begun to tell us what to believe. These outlets make everyone draw lines in the sand and pick which side to stand on. They are dividing us and teaching people to incite violence and chaos. The media influences and is influenced by those in power. They tell us what they want us to hear and believe.
Social media accessibility is also, in my opinion, a problem. Parents should not allow their youth to have access to social media during their teenagers most influential years. Teenagers absorb information like sponges. If you give them access to negative information, not to mention fake information in some cases, they will absorb it to the fullest. I firmly believe that satirical news feeds that have been so accepted as truth are having a negative impact on our youth’s behaviors. Parents need to step in and teach their children to think for themselves. If a youth can learn to think for themselves and walk a path of respecting others, these shootings in our schools and in our communities will shrink.
Parents need to engage with their children. A lack of love is partially responsible for the violence. In a world of financial hardships and single parent families, our youth do not get the quality attention they need to learn how to make good choices. All of the violence in our world makes me hug my son a little harder.
As I said earlier, I am no scholar. I do not even know all of the details about the current event in Florida. What I do know is that our community needs change. Loving one another as God intended is the only way that that change can happen. Our love for humanity must be color, politically, and culturally blind. Love has no boundaries. This can change the world. God bless and pray for the families in Florida and around our world.
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