Attempted bombings, targeted killings, violent protests, and poisonous rhetoric are only symptoms. Yet we spend much of our time treating them, repeatedly popping painkillers to ease a persistent headache without realizing we have terminal brain cancer.

That’s because it’s easier to believe we can solve all our problems by silencing the other side than it is to admit that the corruption in our hearts and the disregard we have for our fellow Americans is the disease from which all the subsequent division and destruction proceeds.

Remember that life and death is in the power of the tongue, and the mouth speaks the overflow of the heart. And our hearts are the problem.

In our hearts lies hatred of the “other side.” We don’t just disagree anymore; we demonize. We don’t just protest anymore; we verbally and physically assault. We don’t rebuke with the goal of correction and restoration, we rebuke to tear down and destroy. We sow animosity and reap it and sow it back again until we have reaped thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold.

Our disagreements don’t come from a place of love. We don’t believe the best about each other. We don’t assign good intentions to people who have a different view of the country. We vilify them and accuse them of destroying the nation, and they do the same.

This progresses so that over time, advocating for gun rights makes you complicit in children’s murder. Support of a Supreme Court confirmation means you condone sexual assault. Disagreement about the definition of gender is equal to erasure of an entire segment of society.

When the stakes get exaggerated to that degree, it’s not hard to see how an already unstable, violent or ill person might use that as an excuse to take a gun to a house of worship or put some bombs in the mail. Without a doubt, only the perpetrator bears true responsibility for his or her actions, but these things also don’t happen in a vacuum. An environment of hate creates fertile ground for violence.

Inflammatory rhetoric is not the sickness of our nation. The sickness is in each of us, in what we believe and how we think about those we share this country with. As long as we have hearts of hate and enmity toward our political opponents, rather than opposition that is civilized and rooted in love for our neighbors, our nation will remain sick even if we say nothing at all.

 Keeping dialogue productive is important I believe.  Part of the problem is that accountability is diffused when in a group, and things like social media places us in groups.