PAUL STANLEY: 'What Has This Country Become And How Did We Get Here?'

Paul Stanley has lamented the fact that businesses and retailers across the United States have begun boarding up their storefront windows and taking other security measures in anticipation of potential unrest on or around Election Day.

High-end shopping areas of major cities — including Boston, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C. — are increasing security to deal with possible mayhem stemming from Tuesday's election.

The KISS frontman took to his Twitter earlier today (Monday, November 2) to write: "Stores and houses are boarding up for fear of violence and reprisals after Election Day?!?! What has this country become and how did we get here?? When did the coexistence and acceptance of differing opinions go from being the fabric of American democracy to defining your enemy?"

Stanley has been increasingly outspoken on political issues on Twitter in recent months. In October, he defended former Vice President Joe Biden when a supporter of President Donald Trump asked if the Democratic candidate kissing his son, Hunter, was appropriate. Several days earlier, a top staffer with Trump's campaign compared the feel of Biden's ABC News town hall to that of an episode of the beloved children's show "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood", prompting Stanley to respond: "In these times to be mockingly compared to Mr Rogers shows just how much we need to push the reset button. When did we start looking down our noses at kindness and empathy? To be compared to Mr Rogers should be a badge of honor. Let's rethink what we emulate & what is truly cool."

In September, Stanley dismissed misinformation about voting by mail, some prompted by the president, including false claims it will lead to widespread fraud — despite evidence showing such fraud is extremely rare. A month earlier, Stanley blasted Trump for claiming his opponents may steal this month's election. In July, Paul encouraged his social media followers to vote in November, saying that "we have a responsibility to our past and to our future." In April, Stanley blamed a shifting media environment for sharpening partisan divides, saying that Fox News and CNN viewers and live in "different realities."

"Any conversation I've had with somebody who feels contrary to [a particular point of view], they stick to their guns because their reality is based on information that they're getting from a source that has their own agenda," Stanley said during an appearance on Richard Marx's "Social Distancing" talk show. "I'm not saying that CNN is guiltless. It's really become the network of the Democrats versus the network of the Republicans, and your reality and what you see as the truth, not coincidentally, is based upon which network you watch. And that's terrible. We're living in separate universes. If you go from one channel to the other, you think you're in a different time.

"If I were to watch whatever network I watch that's called 'The News,' it's going to feed me what I believe to be reality," he added. "That's the basic truth of it. And, unfortunately, there seems to be different realities, alternate realities… There's gotta be a truth."