Hate

Getting things off my chest

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

On New Years Eve 2023, I remember thinking about and dreading the coming year because it would be an election year. I follow politics pretty closely, more closely I think than most people. I watch and read a variety of news programs and print. I want to hear a variety of opinions even if they are partisan, as most are. Real, impartial, factual reporting is a unicorn. It doesn’t exist. So I feel it’s important for me to be aware of multiple opinions but I make up my own mind. I just knew this year would be chaos.

How do we create our world view, our life compass, our morals? What forms our life compass, the thing that guides our behavior and beliefs? I think it must be our experiences beginning with childhood. We’re born into the world as a blank slate with only the awareness of leaving a warm, protective environment and thrust into a world of noise and light. But, of course, we don’t consciously remember even that. It’s basically our parents and how they care or don’t care for us. It’s our parents that teach or don’t teach us. Plus the thing called genetic memory that runs through our DNA passed down from our ancestors.

I don’t have much respect for politicians and I don’t support a political party. I’m a lifelong Independent voter. I won’t be told what to think. I won’t be told that a huge swath of the American population is evil because they have a different viewpoint or support a different politician. That is fundamentally wrong. That is bigotry. I don’t trust a politician, party, or individual that says that.

While parents help form our beliefs, we’re also influenced by the social construct of our peers. We begin to form our own ideas based on our own experiences. Were you part of a clique in school or were you a loner? Did you fall into line with the group-think or think for yourself? I suspect if you didn’t defer to the group you were ignored or, worse, shunned. Where did this shunning behavior begin? Why did the group think it was ok? Fear, I believe. Fear of being different, of not fitting in. School is usually where one realizes they are a joiner or not, whether they are “accepted” or not.

So now, it seems, if we don’t defer to a particular party we are the enemy. We are bad. We are stupid. We are crazy. We are not individuals within a free-thinking republic. We are a mass without a brain that deserves the hate spewed upon us.

No. We are human beings.

Have we learned nothing? In my 67 years I have never seen political, class, and cultural hate like I see today, like I’ve seen in the past few years. You’d think we’d have learned something from the civil rights movement. You’d think we’d learned that hate consumes the hater, that hate is blind and rabid and will destroy you in the end.

In the past week or so I’ve been sleeping badly. My sleep is disjointed, broken, with anxiety dreams when I do sleep. I wake up with a feeling of dread thinking about what will be in the news today. The violence in our streets, the defacement of our symbols, the hate toward Jews, the silence of our so-called “leaders” about all of that, the hate between political parties and individuals. I don’t feel safe in my own country for the first time in my life and I don’t have any hope that it will change.