Hate and Love
I absolutely love being labeled a hater of Donald Trump. It happens on social media sometimes when I am critical of our President or his administration. It’s become a patterned response from his more ardent supporters: you’re just a hater. You just hate our President, and the implication seems to be that if you hate this President, you must hate America, too. So shame on you.
I love being labeled that way because it is so weirdly emblematic of the tribal nature of our politics today and so ironically incongruous with my belief system. I grew up in a household and went through an educational / religious system in which hating people was fundamentally not allowed, for core ethical reasons and because hating people often leads to violence against people, and we were taught that that was a very bad thing, indeed. I also learned early on as a kid that it made good sense to stand up for what you believed in, and it was okay to be passionate about your beliefs. I learned that you really shouldn’t hate people, but it was not a bad thing to get angry about and even hate certain things, beliefs, orthodoxy and aggressive behavior that hurt people. I also learned to love a lot more things than I hated.
So, it turns out then that I don’t actually hate Donald Trump at all, because I just don’t hate people. But there are things I do hate, and rather intensely. Things like racism, bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, lying, corruption, cruelty, criminality, greed…stuff like that. There are a bunch of things that make me pretty angry too, like abuse of power, nepotism, religious intolerance, white supremacy, environmental degradation, incompetence, arrogance, narcissism, voter suppression, inequity, inequality, cheating, obfuscation, denial of scientific fact, lack of compassion and political propaganda masquerading as news, to name a few.
I focus more though on the things I love and am attracted to. I love my country, freedom, democracy, The Declaration of Independence, our Constitution and its Bill of Rights, the rule of law, the two party system, the free press, honesty, integrity, leadership, good character, equality, charity, equal opportunity, the natural environment, inclusion, tolerance, multiculturalism, scientific rigor and truth, among other things. I believe very strongly in fact-based analysis and decision-making and always telling the truth. The words “Never tell a lie!” were burned into my psyche. In terms of personal characteristics, I was taught to prize honesty and integrity above all else. I learned that a person is only as good as their word. These were common precepts of human decency that came down through the ages.
So, when I feel obliged to criticize this President or his administration, it is not because I hate him. It is because I love things he appears not to embody or subscribe to and demonstrably attacks and diminishes. And he tends to align himself with things I do in fact hate and that make me angry.
I do hate the intense divisiveness in our country that makes it impossible to agreeably disagree with each other and find consensus. We have been split into fractious tribes that now simply disgust each other, and that is sad. It’s a painful dissolution of respect for differences that has deepened and accelerated in this century. I would just love it if we had a President and Congress that would actively help heal that rift in our basic respect for each other’s differences. Maybe we can get there in November of 2020.
Because we desperately need a lot less hate…and a lot more love. Especially now.
