Fulks misses chance to show agape love

Regarding Tom Fulks’ recent commentary (“In SLO County, as across the nation, hate speech is all too common,” Dec. 27):

As the presidential campaign season has heated up, Donald Trump has exposed his hateful, biased self to the American people. Trump is a bully of the worst kind. He uses his wealth, success, public recognition and political incorrectness as an excuse to indulge in hateful rhetoric. Civility doesn’t exist for Trump. However, people are eating it up and using hate speech more openly than ever before. School districts have implemented zero-tolerance policies on bullying, as it has become so prevalent in schools. Yet now we have a presidential candidate who spews hate speech and intolerance. People are following the hate like lemmings. They’ve been given permission to openly hate with Trump as the bully role model.

Also, in a Commentary about hate speech and overcoming it with agape love, it was surprising to read the two last sentences in the paragraph pertaining oddly enough to the local Democratic Central Committee. Mr. Fulks has a right to his opinion of course. However, those two sentences came across as having the disappointing opposite message of agape love. Not responding to “vile” email remarks provides opportunities to take action in other ways by, in Fulks’ words, “accepting pain and suffering without retaliation — returning good for evil.”

This story was originally published January 13, 2016 at 3:27 PM with the headline "Fulks misses chance to show agape love."