I am sick and tired of hearing about the Bad Apples.
“It’s not all of us, it’s just a few Bad Apples.”
“Don’t judge all of us because of a few Bad Apples.”
“He’s just a Bad Apple!”
When you leave one Bad Apple in a basket full of Beautiful Apples. That Bad Apple poisons the rest. The Beautiful Apples get ruined, get tarnished, and get ugly. They all start to go bad. The Beautiful Apples can’t change the Bad Apples, but the Bad Apples can have a terrible effect on the Beautiful ones.
The Beautiful Apples outnumber the Bad Apples hundreds of thousands to 1. But in a basketful of Beautiful Apples, the Bad Apple is the first one we see. And once seen, we want nothing to do with any of the other Apples.
The solution is to pull those Bad Apples out of the basket as quickly as possible.
We are NOT APPLES, but the solution is the same.
A handful of Bad Cops DOES NOT REPRESENT all Police Officers.
A handful of Bad Protesters DOES NOT REPRESENT all Protesters.
Those that turn their backs to injustice DO NOT REPRESENT the rest of us.
A handful of Bad People DOES NOT REPRESENT Mankind!
I am sick and tired of the media ONLY talking about the BAD APPLES!
I am sick and tired of us sharing ONLY the news about the BAD APPLES!
I am sick and tired of us going out of our way to see, hear, and give attention to ONLY the BAD APPLES!
YES, YES, YES! We must keep each other informed! We must call out injustice! We must learn to unite against it. But we must NEVER GLORIFY IT and give it a chance to fester. We cannot allow the Bad Apples to represent or destroy the Beautiful Apples and all that they are.
Police Officers must make it a priority to pull those Bad Apples from their basket. We depend on you, the brave, selfless men and women who wear those shields to protect us. You protect us from the wrong doings of the Bad Apples that litter our world. We need you to protect us from the Bad Apples on the force.
Protestors must make it a priority to pull those Bad Apples from their basket. We depend on all of you who are brave enough to stand up against injustice and shout for a better world for all of us. You give the silent and the scared a voice. And you remind us that we do not have to bow down to the will of the Bad Apples. We need you to shout louder than the Bad Apples that tarnish your words.
The Media, Social and Network, must make it a priority to stop glorifying the Bad Apples. We depend on you to supply us with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. You tell every person, in every corner of the world, what is happening everywhere else. We want to believe you, we need to believe you, we should be able to believe you. Why do you insist on sensationalizing the Bad Apples? Why do you skew the facts, stoking fear and anger? We need you to use your influence to show the Beautiful Apples that we outnumber the Bad.
And to each of us. It is time for us to self-examine. Each of us is a mix of a Beautiful Apple and a Bad Apple. We must do everything in our power to let the Beauty prevail. Do not let the Bad ruin us, tarnish us, or make us ugly.
To all those that have been stepped on, stepped over, hurt, ridiculed, beaten, murdered, or made to feel less than Beautiful…I am so sorry. I wish that I could have stood up for you. I wish that I could have done something to prevent all of this hate.
We are all very different, but we are all the same. The most beautiful basket is filled with a variety of colors, tastes, shapes, and sizes. No one should be viewed any less than another.
I promise to continue to help those in need as much as I can. I promise to push back against all that is Bad and fight back with all that is Beautiful. I promise to share this message of Hope to everyone who will listen. And I hope that you will do the same.
You are Beautiful and you are not alone.