Throughout history, the United States, along every other country, has had their issues. There have been highs, and there have been lows. But one thing is for certain: nothing good ever comes easily.
With that being said, the United States as a whole has been experiencing a series of unfortunate events recently. We watch the news and hear the reports of a new incident each and every day. Most are at a loss of words for the recent events, wondering where it all went wrong. Yet, sadly, there is still a number of people who support the measures taken to prove a point. Whether the point that is trying to be proven is an issue with racism, gay rights, equal rights, or anything else for that matter, violence is certainly not the answer.
There have been numerous hate crimes targeting the LGBTQ community recently. To be more specific, June is the national LGBTQ pride month. Those in the LGBTQ community are invited to come together to celebrate themselves through events such as the "Gay Days" festival. On June 12th, there was a mass shooting at a club in Orlando, Florida. The attacker killed fifty members of the LGBTQ community, and injured fifty-three, leaving it to be the largest mass shooting in U.S. history.
We wonder why we can't find peace. We wonder why we can't find a common ground. We wonder why our country is struggling in more ways than one. But what we fail to realize is that with every incident that occurs, we find the need to put the blame on someone else instead of facing the incident head on and asking ourselves how we got to this place.
We need to take a step back and realize how detrimental it is to our country as a whole if we keep blaming others. The more we put the blame on others, the more we deceive ourselves, and the further away we get from finding peace. It is time for our country to face our problems and find a way to solve them in a humane manner. With the continuation of hate crimes, we are allowing ourselves to live in a constant state of fear. These crimes are being committed by people full of hate and anger against innocent people and it is time to put a stop to it. We need to seriously rethink how we go about solving our current issues to prevent future issues from forming.
As citizens of the United States, it is so important to come together and accept one another for who we are and what we stand for, individually and as a whole. It is time to accept the beauty in everyone being different, but uniting as one at the end of the day. As the great writer, Leo Tolstoy once said, "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."
