Hate: My Personal Origins

A continuation of my essays on hate, this time focusing on how I learned to hate with every iota of my being when I was young. As I’ve grown older, it has become apparent that nurture overwhelms nature to a great degree and looking back at how being bullied changed me I can see that now. Why? Because one can change back after being changed…

I was a cheerful, happy kid who got criticized for talking too much in my early years. The world was so fascinating and a source of constant wonder, so I wanted to share that with others. Born into a family where my siblings were half-brothers sixteen and twenty years older respectively, that meant I was dealing with adults full time and they don’t like to hear from kids. They were also more concerned with extending their adolescence or reliving it, so that had something to do with it.

To be clear, I was never beaten, abused, or mistreated. Instead I was pretty much left to do whatever I wanted -- which could have been disastrous. Fortunately for my parents, I was a relentlessly good kid enamored of heroes and acts of valor. Sadly, I never had the kind of health or physical strength to do much with those impulses.

Hate: A Challenging Dream

An attempt to sleep in resulted in one odd dream that ended on a strange note and a profound question. Part of my ongoing series Hate.

Awaking and going back to sleep rarely results in memorable dreams for me. This is not the case this morning. It started as an odd jumble involving a look at the next Captain America film in a sociopolitical context at a nearby Catholic college presentation open to the public. In the dream, I was sick and bundled in a blanket in a front row seat.

The female professor making the presentation was very liberal and very much about being in control of the discussion. We watched a clip and then she asked a question that had absolutely nothing to do with what we had just watched. Tedious conversation followed.

At that point I was losing interest in the whole thing, since it appeared to be a waste of time and I felt lousy. I saw a friend sitting several rows in front of me and we waved to each other. Yes, I was sitting in the front row and suddenly there were rows in front of me. One has to love the ability of dreams to be completely inconsistent.

A Prelude to Hate

After reading the news this past week, it has struck me that there is a pattern that groups of people exhibit that show a steady decline  towards hostility of the armed and unarmed kind. While I have long understood some of the mechanisms involved, one that had escaped me until recently was how false labels of hatred and bigotry (or oppression back in the day) can be used to foster the very things they claim to be combating. This has become the main weapon of choice on the political left in the United States over the past few years.

It is all very basic “us vs. them” behavior, but as I dwelt on it, I realized this is how societies crumble. Breaking down people into special interest groups is the same as forming tribes or, in a more modern urban variation, street gangs and mafia. This segregation leads to growing feelings of distance toward any group that is not your group. It then becomes easy to attribute falsehoods to the “others” because the are obviously bad – if they were good, they would be part of the group.

Hate

As I've grown older and gotten personally involved in politics, I've noticed a trend that has been gaining steam of late. That trend is the use of the word "hate", usually in relation to those who oppose your politics. Occasionally, I see it on the Republican and conservative side, but most often it comes from the mouths of those on the left, especially Democrats. It usually comes out in the form, "I hate Bush, he's destroying our country." Lately, I've seen it spread to other Republicans, especially relating to incumbents in Minnesota. What used to be mainly confined to Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) has been applied to the governor and others without any hesitation or real thought. I fail to see any good coming out of this behavior as it polarizes things even further.

But perhaps polarization is what the DNC wants after losing three elections in a row. When Howard Dean said, "I hate Republicans and everything they stand for," it became a defining moment for the direction of the Democratic Party. Instead of reaching out to the middle ground, they didn't just drift toward the far left, they ran screaming to it. Hmm, maybe that's why they wanted Dean to be chairman. The recent ouster of Joe Lieberman in Connecticut's Democratic primary is further evidence of the radicalization going on. Because of his pro-Iraq war, pro-security stance, they railroaded him out of the party despite having a liberal voting record that equals Ted Kennedy! That is plain stupid, as Joe will easily win re-election as an independent. But that is only the beginning, take a gander at Michael Moore's threat to Hillary Clinton here.

This reckless rhetoric is a danger to those moderate Democrats who are still in with the other Donkeys. Right now, it looks like they are getting kicked around by the party base which has abandoned all common sense, not to mention the common folk that make up the majority of our country. So what does all this have to do with the word "hate"?

Hatred is a base, primal emotion that leads to rash decisions (or more accurately, reactions) when confronted with any kind of opposition. What I've been seeing is people reacting emotionally more than carefully contemplating issues. So they say they hate a candidate, usually on one issue and only based on a surface understanding of what is going on. The kicker is that they don't want to hear the facts and don't want to know the context because they enjoy the anger. Anger can be highly addictive and I have known a people who admitted to enjoying being angry.

Many people have a "fight or flight" reaction to anger and that is why the word "hate" is especially dangerous. People will react fearfully in some cases, being cowed and bullied, while others will greet hatred with hatred. Both are dangerous outcomes, with the latter the worst, as it can spiral into a tit-for-tat escalation. I'm getting the uncomfortable feeling we have entered an era much like that of the 1830's, when growing divisions started to ferment into the cauldron that became the Civil War a mere thirty years later.

It takes a great deal of self discipline and true sense of caring about others not to reciprocate hate. Both these attributes are in decline in our society, as the basic family structure has eroded since the 1960's. We learn diplomacy in families, we learn to love those we don't necessarily like, and we learn our morals from our parents. With a solid family foundation missing so often these days, people go out into our communities with an attitude of "me first" and an inability to see the needs of the greater good. Of course this is a generalization, but looking at how people treat each other now compared to when I was growing up, there has been a stark change.

Hate is getting in the way of open dialogue and I wish people would think before they bandied that word around. Nothing constructive can come of it. We need at least a thin veneer of civility in order to work together and it isn't that hard to do, is it? United we stand, divided we fall... And we have too many threats in the world coming at us now and in the future. Me, I'm refusing to hate any politician as my small contribution to America.