Hello jimmymccready,
The Klan et al must be very unhappy,
Ideally they would be happy well adjusted citizens who have realized the error of their ways and renounced hatred.
If everybody just lives a positive life and contributes in their own way to society, with sincere respect for others, that is how we make America greater.
It's like they are stuck in childhood with foolish immature ideas.
Children love to get presents. For children, the receiving is the greatest.
Most people, when they mature, they realize at some point that there is great pleasure/reward in giving, making someone else happy, seeing that happiness the giver created, sharing that moment.
Likewise, mature well-adjusted people see the big picture that it works the same way as a citizen of a great nation.
You make your contribution, whatever it is, your work doing something good for society, maybe you build something, provide something, maybe some product or service, and you realize that you are a part of things.
Your contribution to society benefits others as you earn your pay. It's a win/win scenario, being a positive contributing citizen of the greater whole.
There is no place for hatred in that beautiful view.
A nation would ideally be comprised of free individuals who all want to make their own contribution to society in their own chosen way.
It's like a big mystery. We all come into this world and then we have to find our place, figure out how we will fit into the grander scheme to make the nation work.
That would be great if everybody felt like that. That would be a wonderful vision of a great nation.
And in that vision there is no place for deplorable hateful spiteful people.
But the reality is that some people just do not have a good childhood.
Nobody is born a racist or a hater. They are taught to do this by very messed up parents, and/or peers.
A well adjusted child is far less likely to fall into this mindset, but the troubled ones who are not happy, the ones who have their needs neglected, the ones who are looking for something, searching for some kind of higher meaning, the sad ones who have never been shown how beautiful the world can be; they are the ones who can fall into hatred.
If they have not become a racist by the time they are a young adult it becomes far less likely it will ever happen.
A well-adjusted grown person who has everything to look forward to almost never changes into a hater. They would have no reason to.
Haters are sad people.
We don't need any more reminders of hatred. It is a mistake to reinforce that with flags, statues and symbols.
There are plenty of people in this world whose families fought for the South, who are not racists, not haters.
That doesn't have to be cooked into the mindset.
It's all according to how people are raised.
It is sad there is so much hatred, but the bright side is that people can change.
Many haters have renounced such ways and built a happy life.
They just need to know there is a place for them in a positive world if only they are ready to have a better life.
Most haters who join groups only do that because they are searching for some kind of meaning.
The meaning all Americans should search for is not to identify with the white race, but to expand that to a much larger group.
They just need to think of themselves as being part of the human race.
All the greatest things in the world were built by people who worked together without hatred for one another.