LEARNING TO HATE

Don't you think it's easier to hate than to love?  Each side in a standoff thinks the other hates the most.  Lefty thinks Righty needs to tone down and be more civil.  Righty thinks Lefty just wants them to hush and go away.

But a case could be made for the way Americans were taught to hate George Bush.  Daily demeaned in the press, Bush was characterized as a cowboy, mocked because he was said to be unintelligent/couldn't pronounce words correctly, incessantly accused of stealing an election or starting a war (either over a weapons lie or to distract us from the high unemployment figures...of 4%).  President Bush never answered the bashing; he never gave what he got.  And that made the opposition foam at the mouth and ratchet up the animosity all the more...

Hate is a hard thing to curb once given it's head.  The casualty of such passion is REASON.  Bush haters spilled out into the streets.  Can you just IMAGINE if these same things were done in the streets

about our present president?

                                                            

Or, how about the cottage industriess that sprang up in t-shirt manufacturing and bumper sticker businesses?

Remember the movie that was made called "Assassination of the President"?  Could that be considered hateful?

We now know that the AZ shooter had great animosity toward President Bush.  That was not widely reported, but the shooter's problem was not the president.  The problem was his mental disease which ran headlong into "authority".  Authority (particularly the authority of the government) was the shooter's target until 2007, when his attention fell on his local Congresswoman.

Hating is particularly dangerous because it becomes like an adrenaline addiction.  Now we are called to also hate the filthy rich.  Wall Street.  Business.  Some even have contempt for their own country.  They say America is full of racism, sexism, immigrant phobes, homophobes, and on and on.  When did we begin to hate groups of people?  I can remember political disagreement all my life, but only in the last 20 years do I remember opposition-hating.  WHY are we hating?

Lately there is one big Kahuna that daily receives loathing.  Sarah Palin is an unannounced candidate for president who is a catch-basin for hateful rants.  I can't figure out why.  If she is all they say she is...what's to worry?  If all she wants is to serve her country, why would we despise/verbally assault her?  Where is justification for personal remarks about her intelligence, the pitch of her voice, her expressions, her hair, her clothing, and the way she raises her children?  Comedians joke about the intent of a baseball's team toward her 14 year old daughter, they disparage an out-of-wedlock daughter, they call her innocent baby a "retard", and imply incest regarding the father of Bristol's baby.  That is OUTRAGEOUS!  Now tell me who wants to lay their family down to run for office anymore?

Yesterday as I waited in the doctor's office for a "nose hose" checkup, I was looking at a magazine article about the Palin's.  I mentioned it to the doc as I went in...and got an eyeroll.  I'm interested in knowing how people arrive at their assumptions and this particular person was educated and a woman.  So I asked what was most objectionable to her about Sarah.  The doctor's response was that she disagreed with her policies.  When asked about which, she said "well, I thought the bullseye on the map was over the top".  Here is an identical map from the DNC.

Since Palin's map was not the first political campaign to regularly pinpoint "soft" districts with a bullseye, I have to assume that there must be other issues with which the doctor disagreed.  I like this woman and would like to believe the best of her that she doesn't just swallow the media blitz, but examines news for truth.  But let's face it.  This doc leads a busy life like many people.  News is caught here and there.  And if the news is caught from the mainstream, there is verifiable bias.   http://www.mrc.org/biasbasics/biasbasics1.asp

Civil discourse has always been our heritage.  As society has pockmarked civility and coarsened the way we interact, our discourse struggles.  It brings to mind how Thomas Jefferson and John Adams disagreed on matters of policy.  Their letters reveal their heartfelt strife which ended in complete alienation of their close friendship.  Jefferson (the libertarian) and Adams (the conservative) had high stakes looming over them for the country's survival.  If their frail newbie didn't "get it right", the United States was sunk.  Good reason to be politically passionate.  Well, well.  Things change and things stay the same.  Now it is China that is looming over us, while Islamofascism is like a deadly, constant drip, drip.  Again, we need to get things right.

Do you know the ending for the Jefferson/Adams conflict?  In their later years, a peacemaker and physician named Dr. Benjamin Rush (a mutual friend and also a signer of the Declaration) stepped in to help them begin to reconcile.   http://pavellas.com/2010/02/03/john-adams-thomas-jefferson-from-friendship-to-antagonism-to-reconciliation/    The men did resolve their conflict.  And as morning dawned on July 4, 1826, Jefferson and Adams had thoughts of each other as each friend drew his last breath only hours apart.  It was 50 years after the two had signed the Declaration of Independence. 


Our President called the nation to a moratorium on rancor only seven days ago.  Still, a peacemaker on call in the House today would have been handy.  The reaction to the vote to repeal Obamacare...raised the threat level for civility to RED.  (To understand, google remarks by Steve Cohen/Sheila Jackson Lee.)  


Where is a Benjamin Rush when you need him?