I saw a poor fellow making the terrible mistake of suggesting on a Facebook post the other day, (I spend an inordinate amount of time there), that love was the answer. He put it this way; “I try to think of ways too find some love for all those people that I’m supposed to hate. I find it very satisfying.”
I little pretentious perhaps but also mostly innocuous. A friend followed with a comment that said that they were in agreement, loved the sentiment but couldn’t find anything to love about the notorious monster Donald Trump.
In one foolish move after another, my friend (me that is), responded by saying that it was people like Trump who most needed love and that it was most liberating for us, in our meditations, to free ourselves from that kind of hatred. He went on some more about the vagaries of fate and reminded the readers that he had, Trump that is, after all, started out as nothing but an innocent little baby, just like the rest of us.
And with that said, the references to such other human monsters such as Stalin and Hitler began to form and fly. Already, I could easyily imagine a few loyal old friends putting a little distance between themselves and my post by scrolling on, with a look of wonder, What the hell is he thinking out loud about now, no doubt. People are often thinking that I’ve lost my mind whenever I get off script.
“Would you find something to love about Stalin and Hitler and those other monsters throughout time then, I suppose?” I was asked by a well-meaning responder. “Why yes”, I had to reply. (I was in a corner now). I applied to those monsters the same reasoning behind my original statement. What else could I do. It was that or to turn and run. Then I tried to imagine Stalin with his communist cap and Hitler with his mustache as naked little babies. Try it and tell me that it doesn’t make you feel better! I wish that I had of just said that I hadn’t known Stalin or Hitler and left it at that instead of trying to explain my way out.
Soon after I gathered myself together and I ran on out of the social media room, watching for flying words as projectiles. Once outside the net-space there was a moment to reflect.
I understand the reaction to Trump. I’ve said my piece and I spoke my mind on that subject. I saw about ten minutes of “The Apprentice” once and that was about enough for me to understand that Trump and I were not very well aligned, as they say. I bore through his pugnacious performance when he debated Hillary Clinton. It was embarrassing to watch though I’m not with her either, and saw it as a very good characterization of Richey Rich’s snotty cousin Reggie Van Dough (remember him?).
Then we saw via our news media more, equally repulsive, Trumpian antics. There was the perverse clutching (humping) of the flags, the Bible held high as if it were a sword, and deep tax cuts for the already vulgarly wealthy. He continued to insult us by stirring-up the crowds towards greater hatred, suggesting a love for dictators, trying to cheat in elections and all those things Trump has made himself famous for and more than that for sure.
But is Trump really, out of so many fine examples of under-developed humans, really so bad that we can go on loving everyone but Him, or Stalin, or Hitler?
Trump is a bad boy no doubt, but who else can we think of that might fill those monstrous shoes? Do we condemn those who got away with the most murders over and beyond the hate that we have for those who commit less murders? Do we hate Stalin more than Hitler, more than Attilla the Hun, more than Bush or Obama or Clinton or Cheney or Biden? They all murdered their share as well!
So that we can be secure in our correct measure of anger and hate against injustice, how do we know when to adjust our hate-rays to the proper settings and right people? Because when it comes to killing innocents, if I’m not mistaken Trump would be towards the bottom of the Numbers of Innocents Killed While In Office list yet he has elevated himself beyond all that and is surely smeared with the tar of his own deliberately grotesque actions.
Though you might now be thinking so, this is not an essay on what-about-ism, it’s about how we respond to things and how propaganda influences us. So, to be fair, in an examination of Trump, one might say, that there are other reasons to hate him. Of course, there are. There are other reasons for hating all these people. The point is, that I think that a large part of our hate towards Trump is manufactured. And manufactured hate is always a dangerous friend. We hate Trump in large part because he grabs pussy, for sure, and got peed on (maybe) among other things. Reason enough for to hate someone no doubt but should he really be viewed in the same light as Stalin or Hitler? Are we with reason hating Trump for what he might do?
I do think that a lot of hate is manufactured. There is more of it in our society than what is healthy. I think that there are many among us, self sometimes included, that spend a lot of time joining in the manufacturing of hate where our energy may have been spent in more enlightened ways. Hate it seems, like some other temptations, can be very attractive. This is well known and well known particularly among those who manipulate us against each other. The left wants us to fear and hate the right, and the right wants us to fear and hate the left. It’s this mutual hatefulness that they run on. We all know this, yet we still, like mice after cheese, get caught in the trap.
In George Orwell’s classic, 1984, there is the character, Emanual Goldstein. According to the official news in Oceana, the home of Big Brother, Goldstein is a sworn enemy of the State. Likewise, the State, the government of Big Brother that is, is the enemy of Goldstein.
Everyday on the government sponsored news, which was nothing but government propaganda, they aired what was called, The Two Minute Hate.
In the Two Minute hate Big Brother would show pictures and play back Emanual Goldstein speeches while those loyal to Big Brother, and who wasn’t, would shake their fists and yell curses at Goldstein.
According to Orwell, the purpose of the Two Minute hate, was to direct the people’s anger and frustrations over their miserable and overly oppressed lives, that was their existence under the watchful eye of Big Brother, over towards Emanual Goldstein. Whatever was wrong in their lives, the meaninglessness of their work and the hyper active surveillance and subservient demands of Big Brother, were all the fault of Goldstein.
I was, while pondering our existence, thinking of all the things that have happened here in America and within the American sphere of influence, (the world that is), both before and after the invention of Trump. Looking along that line I find that Trump was not much more than a little bump along the way with some very extravagant theatrics thrown in. A couple of impeachments, lots of shenanigans, especially good when the spoiled children got involved, but not much else that was particularly out of line with the usual business. Trump did try to do a few things like getting out of Afghanistan and Syria, defunding NATO, and was even audacious enough to talk to folks like Kim Jong Un And Vladimir Putin. These things did not make him popular among his peers, but for the most part, his time in office will mostly be remembered as an over-the-top, somewhat expensive, display of cheap circus tricks with dogs, ponies, smoke and mirrors. Even the highly sensational failed coop on the capital was in the end, more show than go. The collective has now turned its attention to his hoarding of “Americas Sacred Secrets”. Ho-Hum
There are a lot of things to hate. A lot of hateful actions like, slaughtering millions. Most hateful actions, we should remember, lest we find ourselves out of line, require more than a single person’s effort, but of course, not always. The reality of Americas constant epidemic of random shootings come to mind. But as for the rest, the Stalin’s and Hitlers of the world, the wars and dictatorships, the surveillance and militarized police, the censorship and the chipping away of the freedom to vote with confidence or protest outcomes, these things take hundreds, thousands of people to help push the evil thing along. Not the act of a single terrible person. I don’t quite know how to excuse those who join in with the madmen, who are often the ones who actually pull the levers or triggers while so earnestly hating the master-minds, but they are certainly complicit and guilty.
What I think we want, in real terms, is to keep the madmen at a minimum and to direct the dozens or hundreds or thousands who join in the tyranny or slaughter to not do that. Maniacs arise. They will kill as many as it takes to achieve their goals whether that’s 20 million or one. The goal, with these mass shootings exempted, is generally not just killing for the sake of killing, it is killing for the sake of conquest and power. They cannot do this alone. Madmen and tyrants need help in achieving their gruesome goals. In the case of Trump, with the political divisions that have been created, with the anger and hatred that has been fomented between the red and the blue, hate for Trump is fuel for the reds as hating liberals is unproductive for the blues except as a way of strengthening the liberal resolve to have their way. In other words, the hate is not a remedy to liberal politics any more than it is to the weakening of the MAGA sensation. In fact, it hardens the heart, strengthens the stubborn resolve against each other and opens the mind to over-the-top accusations, inaccurate characterizations and sometimes even murder.
Many among us believe that we are precariously close to more and more violence in our lives. On the world stage, violence is assured as the US continues its meddlesome empire building and world domination goals and a few other powerful type nations try to keep-up. A recipe for major disaster.
Here at home, it is not so much goals of power and domination that drive the gathering forces of violence, it is hate.
I look at posts on social media and I spend as much time as a social outcast can visiting live with whoever I can snare into 10, 20, 40 minutes, an hour, of listening to me rambling on about the purpose of life, so I know a little about what folks are thinking.
Sometimes, and it confuses me, I’ll see a post that tells me how much someone hates those haters over there for being such a bunch of haters. Kind of like a snake in the road, I usually try to step around it. Sometimes, like now, I kick the damn thing to see how it responds.
Love Is The Answer
If true words were ever spoken, I think that it is those. Love is the answer. “We cannot overcome hate with hate, only love can conquer hate.” Dr. King reminds us. That’s the recipe. It’s been said over and over again, and with the full explanation of every road to achieve that end handed down throughout time to us who are here now.
We’ve also seen, through many other examples, how hate is manufactured, bred and raised-up like a seed in families, in towns, in political parties, in churches, neighborhoods and country clubs, it knows no bounds. But with love, if our paths cross with a child raised in an angry and hateful home, we don’t add to the problem by telling him how much we too hate him. We try to build a bridge, even if only for a moment and as we carry-on, a part of us hopes that we’ve made some little difference.
If any of us really want to dump the Trump, the best remedy for that isn’t going to be by way of hating him. The way to eliminate Trumps influence is to quit advertising it. The way to move beyond Trump is to introduce something that is truly more interesting, more of use in the world and more real in its goals and objectives than to be simply less evil than him.
There is almost limitless room for real, substantial, improvement in people’s lives. Political opportunities to perform legislation that almost anyone could see as beneficial to both themselves and to others and every one of those opportunities is wrapped in some kind of loving, caring and healing package. If we want something better, maybe its time to leave what we don’t want behind and try to rally around something that we can all believe in.
