This letter has been some time in the making, but the recent election in France made my decision for me.

France’s new president is a centrist, which is something that has become foreign to the United States in the last few elections. Of course, it really came to focus when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. A significant portion of this country could not stand for this, and things have gone downhill since.

The Tea Party gained popularity as well as other racist and discriminatory groups, but I believe Fox News and other right-wing organizations have to share a lot of the blame for our political divide.

Fox News supposedly has the largest rating among news organizations. I feel that if it does it is because they slant the news in a way that too many people want to believe.

Most of the people who seem to watch Fox News as their only source of news seem to be hypnotized in to believing their outlook is the only way. I wonder if there are some subliminal messages included in their programming to keep their viewers tuned in.

Also, most of the viewers seem to have very strong religious views. This is where I see hypocrisy. Millions of dollars have been spent and several of their top administrators and news people have left because of sexual accusations. It is hard for me to see how the loyal Fox watchers cannot see the hypocrisy and at least wonder if they are being fooled.

Also if a person has strong religious views,  it would seem Fox’s discriminatory views would also be hypocritical to the viewer. The Golden Rule should be the tenet of everyone’s life. But Fox News’ treatment of certain groups certainly does not approach abiding by this rule.

It is time for us to all watch and read news from different organizations and not just one and use our own minds to determine the facts. The treatment of facts by our current administration is a true joke. They have created the phrases “alternative facts” and “fake news” to excuse anything for which they don’t agree.

They even parade out buffoons who try to excuse these “facts,” but they do it in such a way that many of us want to look at their performances for our daily dose of humor and disbelief. And then they tell us they have the highest ratings, which is really the saddest part.

It does not appear that we can duplicate the election in France, as a candidate has to ally himself with one or the other of our polarized political parties to be viable. We do need to find candidates who are more centrists and elect them to see if we can become more like we want to be, rather than what we appear to be.

We can start by limiting our time on Fox News.

Ralph Walton lives in Granite Quarry.