Libertarian Librarian

I made a somewhat... pointed? provocative?... I dunno the right word, but I commented on BP's blog the other day about the evil of hatred, in particular the rising visceral hatred of much of the Left towards George W. Bush. It wasn't innocent-- I knew that BP and most of his readers hated Bush and I knew most of their reasons-- and I admit I was curious to see the response.

Well, here it is.

I think BP has rather vividly made my point for me-- hatred is bad, end of story. Because if you hate something, there can be no forgiveness, no redemption, no acknowledgment that the hated entity has any redeeming values or is capable of anything good.

"And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

You don't have to be a Christian to appreciate the beauty and truth of Paul's writings in Corinthians. And if the greatest is love, the worst must be it's opposite, hate. Just as the warmth and joy and peace of love spreads from those who share it, so to does the anger, bitterness and inner turmoil of hate spread from those who embrace it.

Hate stresses the body-- it makes stomachs churn and muscles tighten up in the fight/flee response. It raises blood pressures and makes us more susceptible to taking paranoid feelings and perspectives as legitimate.

Hate clouds judgment, leading BP to lump such things as "I hate Bush because he has diluted and distorted the Constitution to benefit a single Political Party", which is a legitimately bad thing that Bush has done, with such things as "I hate Bush because he says 'nuculer'", which is rather petty and irrelevant.

Hate spreads. Anger, bitterness, short-tempers, snippy responses, over-reactions, paranoia, assuming the worst. All symptoms of hatred and all very contagious. The old saying is "All it takes is a few bad apples to spoil the whole barrel," right? Well, think about the various "bad apples" that you've known in your life and then think about how much of that negative energy comes from hating-- hating their job, hating their life, hating people that aren't like them, hating people that disagreed with them and hating themselves. And think about how coercive and insidious all that negative hateful energy was on you and others.

Pretty soon reasonable, intelligent and generally affable folks like BP are so caught up in their hatred of George Bush that their ill-will for the man starts to bleed into anything and everything he is connected to-- most or all Republicans become evil, the media becomes "Teh Mighty Wurlitzer of Right Wing Media", and things that anyone who supports or likes Bush says or does can are automatically assumed to be wrong, misguided or "canards".

Now, I don't believe that all of BP's vehemence at the Right is a product of hatred of George Bush-- clearly there's plenty of hatred of Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and a variety of others. Nor do I mean to imply that folks on the Right hate any less and I do believe that much of the hate that Bush inspires is a direct result of his embrace of Karl Rove's dirty tricks, negative attacks and policies to marginalize the middle.

I also don't mean to pick on BP, who I still find to be an intelligent, rational and generally affable fellow, but I think the vehemence of his response to my rather mild rejoinder to be wary of casting stones while living in a glass house is a pretty vivid illustration of why I think hatred is bad. It blows things out of proportion. WAAAAYYY out of proportion oftentimes.

Getting back to an earlier point-- hate precludes redemption and forgiveness. Case in point:

In short, Nick, the "Hate comes from both sides" is useless here until someone from the Right repudiates and excommunicates Newt, Limbaugh, Coulter, and Pat Robertson from our public discourse. In reality, the premiers of the Republican Party have been using 'Civility' to distort and disrupt any objections from their counterparts while using terms of disparagement and denigration to turn Democrats into Demons for the last twenty five years.

In other words, the other guy is worse AND he started it so I am justified in my own hatreds, biases and disdain of the opinions of those that disagree with me. I ain't changing 'til he does. Which is, quite frankly, pretty lame.

"An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind." --Gandhi

There is a disturbing culture of fear, bias and hatred in our country these days. Much of it is due to George Bush, his appointees and his advisers and I understand why many hate him and his policies. But hating doesn't help-- it only feeds the beast.

Hating never helps.

Herein ends the sermon.

Labels: Karma, mod, Politics, Religion