We must make kindness popular

We live with bullying every day. It is prevalent in our schools, workplaces, online and now in a presidential election.

When you bully, you bring out the innate un-kindness in the people around you. When you speak down to people based on race, body weight, intelligence, mental health, developmental disability, gender or sexual orientation, you are not playing fair.

People are afraid because they have been the victim of bullying or its terrifying brother discrimination. When we hear of a soldier dying, do we ask his color before we mourn the loss of an American life? When hurricanes hit do we ask the religion of the town before we help? Why does it take catastrophe to blot out our differences? Is it so hard to understand that people have the same needs no matter how they look or where their parents came from?

I am sickened at the loss of our basic human empathy and the upsurge in bullying that this country has fostered. I guess it was there all along, hidden like a plague just waiting to be unleashed. I blindly believed the world was getting kinder.

How do we change things? How do we make kindness popular?

Stacey Denny

Spokane Valley