Are you addicted to bad news? Do you have an addiction to “gloom and doom”? Well, if so, then 2011 has been a banner year for you so far. There are plenty of websites out there that do nothing but track the latest doom. Some people actually seem to enjoy it when a new disaster strikes. But we shouldn’t rejoice over bad news. Millions of people are deeply hurting around the world because of all of the horrible things that have happened so far this year. Tens of millions more are going to be deeply suffering soon as our world becomes increasingly unstable. It is important to tell the truth about what is going on in our world because we sure aren’t getting it from the mainstream media, but we should never get to the point where we are totally addicted to the news cycle and are “hungry” for another piece of bad news to report. Our world is falling apart and that is a very sad thing. There are going to be come incredibly sad times to come. But that doesn’t mean we have to be depressed. It is when things are the darkest that the greatest heroes are needed. Instead of cursing the darkness, let us all decide to be lights in the darkness.

Nature sure has been going crazy lately. It is almost as if God has been lifting His protective hand from it. Within the span of a few weeks we witnessed one of the worst tornado outbreaks in U.S. history and the worst flooding along the Mississippi River that we have seen since the Great Depression. The United States has not seen such suffering from natural disasters since Hurricane Katrina. Hopefully the rest of the year will be calmer, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Of course who could forget what happened in Japan earlier this year. It was the worst earthquake in modern Japanese history and it was the worst tsunami anyone has ever seen. The images of that giant wave of water sweeping miles inland will stay with all of us for the rest of our lives.

The crisis at the Fukushima nuclear complex that was caused by the giant tsunami continues to get worse by the day. The media has been strangely quiet about Fukushima lately, but that does not mean that it is not a crisis of nightmarish proportions. Everyone in the northern hemisphere is going to be affected by this radiation in one way or another. The area immediately surrounding Fukushima will probably never be inhabited again during our lifetimes. In fact, as I have written about previously, much of northern Japan may be uninhabitable after all of this is over.

Of course there are plenty of wars to talk about these days. The United States is already involved in three wars and now the whole Osama Bin Laden death episode has some people urging us to take even more military action in the Middle East. The entire region is a tinderbox at this point. Everyone pretty much agrees that there is going to be a major war in the Middle East at some point – the only question is when.

In fact, most Americans don’t realize this, but the world gets a little bit closer to World War III every single day. China is arming like crazy. Have you checked out the new Chinese J-20 stealth fighter? It is a match for anything that we have got. The game is changing and most Americans don’t even realize it.

When I bring things like this up with other Americans they will say things like this: “Well, I am not worried about it. We have enough nukes to turn them into a glass parking lot so they would never mess with us.”

Sadly, most Americans simply do not understand how deeply the past few administrations have cut our nuclear arsenal.

Did you know that today we have less than ten percent of the nuclear warheads that we had during the height of the Cold War?

In 1967, the U.S. had over 31,000 strategic nuclear warheads ready to roll. According to the new nuclear arms treaty that Obama has signed, the U.S. will only be able to have 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads, and the Russians will know where they are in case they ever want to hit us with a first strike.

Most Americans could care less about all this because they think that the real threats to our national security are hiding in caves in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But someday the balance of power between the United States (on one side) and China and Russia (on the other) is going to be of the utmost importance.

Just remember where you heard it.

Of course there is always plenty of economic doom to talk about. Only 37 percent of Americans approve of the way that Barack Obama is handling the economy. And yet virtually all polls show Obama crushing all of the potential Republican contenders in 2012. The sad truth is that both political parties are completely inept when it comes to the economy. The middle class has been in decline for decades and very few of our politicians seem to care. They just stand there with their hands in their pockets as millions of our jobs continue to be shipped out of the country.

Meanwhile, the federal government continues to pile up insane amounts of debt. The “big battle” over the debt ceiling is coming up, and John Boehner is insisting that this time he is going to “get tough” and demand “trillions” in budget cuts.

But considering his track record, the Democrats should just offer him a burger and a shake down at the local Dairy Queen because that might be enough to get him to cave. The reality is that if John Boehner was really serious about cutting the deficit he would have been fighting these battles when Bush was president.

You would think that the American people would be sick and tired of the nonsense in Washington D.C. by now. Sadly, most of the time the American people are distracted by things like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, and when they wake up long enough to pay attention to politics they tend to fight with one another like cats and dogs.

America is a deeply, deeply divided nation today. We are taught to gather together in our little “special interest groups” and hate the people that the media identifies as the “enemies” of our groups.

Hatred for one another is getting out of control. The other day I wrote an article about the hundreds of church burnings that we have seen around the globe so far this year. You would think that would be a thing that everyone would be against. But no, there were actually several comments that either called for more church burnings or that called for the “extermination” of Christianity.

If you go on just about any public Internet discussion forum today, what do you see?

You see a lot of people arguing with each other and insulting each other and hating each other.

You rarely see much love.

The love of most Americans is growing very cold. Most of us seem to be obsessed with “being right” and with hating everyone that disagrees with us.

Yes, there is such a thing as absolute truth and we should always stand up for the truth, but we can do so in a way that is loving and kind toward others.

Instead of hating our politicians, perhaps we should pray for them.

That doesn’t mean that we have to agree with what they are doing. In fact, the majority of the politicians in Washington D.C. should never receive a single vote from any American under any circumstances.

But that doesn’t mean that we have to hate them.

If the hate in this country continues to grow, there will be absolutely no chance that America will turn around.

There really is a tremendous amount of wisdom in this simple phrase….

Love one another.

But in America today we are taught to hate those that are different from us. We are taught to hate those that have different political ideas. We are taught to hate those that treat us badly.

In the end, hate is going to rip this nation to shreds. We can already see signs of this happening from coast to coast. Someday I fear that we will see massive rioting all across America.

So what do all of you think about the future of America?

Is there any reason for hope?

Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below….