Haters
POST 1078
I’m finding it ever more difficult to tolerate the haters. It went over the top long ago, when Trump first gave permission to White supremacists to snarl and spit their real or imagined grievances; to beat up protesters; for cops to bang the heads of perps; and to vomit vitriol attacking “others.” This has often been done in ways that dare us to figure out if haters’ claims are more repugnant or more laughably stupid. Maybe both.
From 1984, by George Orwell:
“In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within 30 seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people, like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.”
Sounds much like a Trump rally.
Consider the idiocy unleashed in the wake of the cargo ship destroying the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. Both the mayor of Baltimore and the governor of Maryland are foolish enough to be Black, so the racist attacks began almost immediately.
From Eugene Robinson’s post of April 1 (and no, this wasn’t an April Fools Day trick):
“This is Baltimore’s DEI mayor commenting on the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge,” one such troll [on Musk’s X platform] posted, along with a clip of [Mayor Brandon] Scott’s remarks [about this “unthinkable tragedy”] to his more than 275,000 followers. “It’s going to get so, so much worse. Prepare accordingly.”
Wait – Black mayor has his job only because of DEI and he’s responsible for the bridge collapse, plus things are going to get “so, so much worse?” That’s both hateful and boundlessly stupid, but there’s more. Another troll wrote as though addressing Baltimore Mayor Scott,
“DEI: Who cares when your city is going to sh-t because of drugs, increased crime, defunding police and poor infrastructure when you have a Mayor that ‘looks like you’, WINNING!!!!!”
I hate to interject inconvenient fact into this hater’s rant, but nothing – no, really nothing – he wrote is true. Other ranters went on to attack Maryland’s Black governor and a Black woman who sits on the Port Commission:
“This is what happens when you have Governors who prioritize diversity over the well being and security of citizens,” posted Phil Lyman, a Utah legislator who is running for governor of his state. “DEI did this,” posted Anthony Sabatini, a GOP congressional candidate in Florida’s 11th District, over a video clip of the bridge’s collapse.”
Pray that the voters in Utah and Florida have enough sense to send these guys packing.
Seeing the racism is one step in understanding our national quagmire of hatred, but there’s more.
Tom Nichols’ piece in The Atlantic on April 1, originally titled Is This Who You Are?, is a must-read essay. He calls for making moral choices, just as if we Americans still have morals and convictions.
The haters claim that this was intended to be a Christian nation. If you want to know what the Founders actually intended, read this. It will disabuse you of any notion that the Founders intended this to be a Christian theocracy. Indeed, avoiding that kind of despotism drove the Pilgrims here.
The mouth foamers want to protect Confederate statues, retain the names of Confederate traitors on schools and military bases and continue the fraud that is their “lost cause” of slavery and cruelty of every sort. Read Jennifer Rubin’s take on these people.
Today’s flamers are as traitorous as their revered Confederate ancestors. They are openly disloyal to our Constitution. In fact, they are pushing for a post-Constitutional America. Lest that sound to you like just so much MAGA conspiracy idiocy to ignore, what they want to do is:
PUT THE CONSTITUTION IN A DUMPSTER AND LIGHT IT ON FIRE!
TAKE AWAY ALL YOUR RIGHTS AND ALL YOUR FREEDOM!
MAKE THIS A NATION WHERE ALL POWER IS OWNED BY WHITE CHRISTIAN MEN ONLY!
No need to take my word for this. Read the Project 2025 document and it’s there in plain language. You might have to skim past the faux patriotic blather to find it.
Meanwhile, it’s important to remember that hating makes people feel powerful. It’s a drug. It is what Orwell said: a “hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture. . . “
But What About You and Me?
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves . . .
– Julius Caesar, Scene II, Shakespeare
So, we rail over the frustration, seeing and hearing those doing harm to others and even to themselves. But rather than hating them, I confess that I’m simply without respect for those who disrespect, somehow comfortable in my double standard. And the self-defeating part is that the sociologists tell us that the haters are the way they are largely because they feel disrespected. I think I may not be helping to calm our national turbulence and devotion to insanity.
I want to be better than that, but for now I’ll settle for defeating the immediate threat.
Best Quote
Inae Oh, writing for Mother Jones about reproductive freedom (you remember that thing, right?):
When knowledge is power, what happens when information goes dark? People, especially society’s most vulnerable, needlessly suffer. And two years after the fall of Roe, this suffering has crept into nearly every crevice of health care and straight into the GOP mainstream. We’ll see if Democrats can successfully get that message across today and every day leading to November.
Perhaps we can help spread the word of what must be done. Think about that as you watch the first presidential debate tomorrow, Thursday, June 27 at 9:00PM EDT on CNN.
Best Read
Take a look at Adm. William McRaven’s (ret’d) essay, How Do We Want America to Be? He lays before us a truth we so often refuse to see and a possibility – even a hope – for something better. That’s refreshing in this time of so many doing their best to dash our hopes.
It will take all of us. As Simon Rosenberg of The Hopium Chronicles reminds us,
“The magic pill is us.”
Just For Fun
In case you missed the craziest play in baseball ever, watch this from the Chicago Cubs.
And for more fun and some fine life lessons, watch Adm. McRaven’s commencement address to the graduates of the University of Texas in 2014. Afterward, you’ll want to make your bed.
“Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”
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– Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), 2016
- Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
- Fire the bastards!
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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
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