 If we are to believe the stories that dominate our newsfeed There are an evil group of people out there who are out to destroy our lives They will take away your freedoms Bombard you with fake news. They do not share your elues. They have no common sense Brainwashing your children with their propaganda. They will do everything in their power to take away all that you hold sacred Beware they are out there The people we call them Them the enemy Them those other ones them the ones we must overcome the target of every comment section everywhere So confident are we that we are the ones who are right We have turned respectful public debate into millions of miniature individual dictatorships of the mind The teeth of our savage soundbrights grows ever sharper by the day While indignant ears grow deaf to anything that does not reinforce our worldview There is no room for reason in a lynch mob No longer a gift and give and take No space for context and complexity in a 280 character tweet the air is growing thin in this hair echo chamber It's getting harder and harder to breathe We need not even look too far before we can identify at them Even amongst brothers and sisters in arms sibling rivalry cuts deep The climate activist questions the urgency of women's rights if we have no habitable planet to call her home The Unionist challenges foreign aid if a working wage can't even feed our own people We hear it's the immigrants that are the problem or those people in SUVs No, it's the dairy farmers the greenies the feminists the turfs is the bankers the church the NRA the liberal media the gay agenda It's them. It's they it's those people if only they stop can you hear that? That's the sound of singular stories It's the sound of red herrings gasping for breath as the future slips away It need not be this way We can be better than this We have the cure for them. It's simple It is us What if we were to take our pointing fingers and turn them upside down to extend the gentle hand of compromise Offer up our gifts and contributions with open hearts embracing grace and humility That's not to say that we should deny the role of privilege Ignore the wounds of the past or cease to pursue our passion for change This is no time for complacency after all the Buddha taught non-violence not pacifism But let us dismantle systems of oppression without creating carbon copies addressed to them Step away from the militancy you have held so close as a lover Soften your heart and walk a mile and shoes that do not fit Shoes that cause you discomfort Blisters edging their way in beneath the soles of the feet we have so firmly planted in the arguments we have convinced ourselves our solid We can be better than this We can be better than this According to particle physics we exchanged 98% of our items with the world around us every year so I am you and You are me and They are us and we are them We are them To somebody somewhere You are them Kurokota. Thank you