Republicans are not the enemies of Democrats.

Democrats are not the enemies of Republicans. 

At least none of us should regard members of the other as our sworn enemy. 

We are all Americans. 

We may be Americans who see things differently but that does not make members of the other party bad people, evil or unAmerican.

What is very clear is that our nation and our state are politically divided. 

But let politics be politics. 

It is OK to see things differently. In fact, the strength of our form of liberty is that we all have the freedom to espouse our own beliefs and respective political ideologies. 

We must stop vilifying people who see things differently. 

Look how close the votes are both in the nation and in Georgia. Half of the nation, or half of Georgia cannot be evil, even if they see things differently than you. 

Someone can be a very good person, with strong values and not agree with us on issues. 

There are far more things that unite us than divide us, but you would not know that by listening to our rhetoric and the way we shout one another down, especially on social media. 

Not only are we divided over political party, most especially over who supports President Donald Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden, but we have allowed those divisions to negatively impact our communities and even our own families. 

We are at a dark place and partisan politics has gotten us here. 

After all the counting is done, and we know who our president will be for the next four years, we should stop being red states and blues states and just be the United States. 

Maybe none of us can do anything to make that happen but what we can do is treat the people around us with kindness, dignity and respect. 

We may not be able to heal the nation but we can do our part to heal our community and our own families. 

You can’t control the way President Trump speaks about his political opponents or the way some Democrats speak about Trump. You can’t control the punditry on FOX News or CNN but you can decide how you speak to the people around you. 

You can control what you share on Facebook or retweet. You can control what you say during family gatherings or what your tone is when write a letter to the editor. 

Yes, tone matters. 

Words matter. 

Decency matters. 

And it doesn’t matter whether you are Democrat or Republican, you can still just be a good person.