How did the US come to this?

By Bette and Ken Anderson, Las Vegas

Thursday, Oct. 27, 2016 | 2 a.m.

We are sure we’re not the only ones who ask what our country is coming to and how it all happened. We’re also sure most of us are not happy with where the pendulum has swung. Let us share our ideas about how it got this way.

There have always been factions. People choose teams to root for and political parties to support. However, in the past two decades we have witnessed through the media and the internet a lot of ammunition for voters to get excited about. There has been an abundance of stories and email messages telling us how bad a candidate is. People once posted facts that could be checked, and now they take whatever information is available and skew it to make a candidate sound horrible.

Most of us are quick to share what we read or hear, or forward disparaging remarks to those we know love to hear anything negative about a candidate. Doing this, are we part of the solution or part of the problem?

We believe the American people deserve two powerful, capable candidates from which to choose. And we believe it should be the goal of these candidates to state clearly how they would address national problems. Voters should be choosing a candidate because their goals are aimed at a better America. Instead, we have been placed in a position where we are warned how bad it will be if one or the other wins next month.

It is like the kid who comes home from school knowing his parents know he got into trouble in school, but rather than deal with the problem, the kid tells his parents there are other kids worse than him.

Lastly, when the election is over, wouldn’t it be nice if the loser would make an honest gesture of congratulating the winner and offer his or her support? Somehow, very few of us believe this will happen, and we will continue to witness hate and ridicule, which fails to make America great.