This is a weekly installment of Craig Murdoch’s column series, “Dazed and Crazed.”

Tensions are high in America. We just had the deadliest mass shooting in American history in Las Vegas. Then two more since then, so Las Vegas seems like a distant memory now. There was the Pulse nightclub shooting. San Bernardino, Dylann Roof’s Charleston massacre, Fort Hood, Sandy Hook, Aurora, Virginia Tech and so many more I couldn’t list them all. If you didn’t notice, all of these occurred within the last ten years. Why have we gotten so violent?

Do we have more mental illness and easier access to guns? Perhaps that’s part of it. We must overhaul our healthcare system and take care of those who are mentally ill. We should also have universal background checks and the inability to sell someone a gun until the background check is complete, with a longer waiting time before you can buy the gun.

I really despise the argument that people who are going to use a gun to commit a crime are going to do it no matter what because they do not care about the law so gun laws should remain how they are. With this logic why should anything be illegal? Should murder be legal because hey, murder’s gonna murder?

I do not believe it is possible to ban guns because similar to drugs and alcohol, it will create a black market. Those were dangerous and I can’t imagine how dangerous a black market for guns would be.

We are so divided and angry at one another for the most obtuse reasons. I truly believe that if you cannot talk about politics without it getting heated and upset, not just with what the person believes but the person itself and it makes you hate someone, then you shouldn’t talk about politics at all.

The tension in America is insane. We do not have to agree with each other, but we have to be okay with each other. We must co-exist if we want to advance as a species and society past all of this primal violence.

If you’ve been reading my past articles you may notice a theme developing, that of unity. We must unify to get anything done. Our infrastructure needs to be worked on, we need better healthcare, better gun reform, mental health reform and so many more reforms to our society. So as long as we are divided we will never conquer; but they will conquer us.

By “they” I am referring to the corruption within the government. They want us to be divided, struggling and full of hate for one another. Divide and conquer is their tactic. The Paradise Papers were just leaked which revealed the various schemes the rich can do in order to evade taxes regardless of what it is on paper rendering the argument that we have the highest corporate tax rate that is still useless.

Of course this reminds me of George Carlin’s idea of politicians. Carlin believed it was all pageantry, politicians don’t really care about any issues, they only ever care about keeping their money. It doesn’t matter their party or politics, they don’t want to pay taxes like the rest of us do and that is what they’ll do.

Regardless of what our supposed representatives are doing, we must still unite — that is the only way to defeat them, to spread this information and call for unity as much as you can. This is the only way to lower the tensions that have plagued this country for the last 10 years. Do not take things so personally when someone disagrees with you, you have to tolerate them no matter what.

To quote Pink Floyd, “Together we stand, divided we fall.”

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