You and I Are Too Old to Be Consumed By Hate

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Photo by Duygu Güngör on Unsplash

There is only one person who truly suffers from hate. Us.

Dear Reader: this is long, best taken in chunks. A reminder, I am going to paid subscriptions beginning in January. I hope you join me.

In the last few days while at a conference in Chattanooga, I got a lot of traffic on a recent story which apparently riled up a few folks. This one:

Look. I’m glad something I wrote made folks think, and I’m also impressed that the final comments in my piece, that part about getting along with folks whose yard signs didn’t align with yours, got some folks VERY riled up.

My article discussed how I make peace with neighbors who are very happy about the Trump victory.

At 71, I need my neighbors. I live alone, and I might desperately need their assistance someday. I can’t afford to be an asshole. We don’t talk politics, and we find ways to be pleasant and helpful to one another.

One blue voter said I made some good points but accused me of ending my piece with “let’s love the facists.”

Wow. Just….wow.

That is a grotesque interpretation of a statement of reason: we have got to find a way to connect with each other or we will implode.

Then this morning I got another hateful note from some gal named Val who would like to firebomb anyone who didn’t vote for Trump.

Wow. Just….wow.

I made a big mistake first time around during Trump. I drank the Trump-hate Koolaid and let it twist me into a gargoyle. Took a while to undo that Gordian knot. I have no intention of letting that happen again.

That said, lest you misunderstand, I haven’t changed my opinion. If anything my opinions are even stronger now. However, this time around, I don’t have time for hate.

I’m Too Old and time is too damned short for me to get infected with such viciousness.

Hate kills. Hate, anger, bitterness, resentment, all that, they KILL.

I’m not going to tell you to sing Kumbayah with the Proud Boys.

Didn’t say that. So kindly don’t twist my words to fit your version.

We self-immolate when we hate. We do ourselves plenty of damage that folks who wish us harm don’t have to lift a finger to do. The bile we drink daily will most assuredly do us in.

Here’s a way to think about it :

“Hate stems from personal perceptions of powerlessness or experience in which we feel injured or mistreated by others,” says Stephanie Carnes, PhD, LCSW, a therapist in New York City. “Sometimes hatred can even be rooted in a perceived threat to our survival as individuals, which naturally triggers a strong emotional response.”

That definition can perhaps help you understand the aggrieved nature of all the folks who didn’t vote like you, and who feel unheard and powerless. The problem, of course, is that those who feel this way choose to kick the can towards people they CAN hurt, rather than at the actual perpetrators (the recent United Health Care CEO killing is the rare exception of someone targeting closer to the source).

The uber-rich, uber-powerful and those who dance on our bones when we hate each other are the ones who deserve our full attention- not the powerless, the marginalized, the folks who did us no harm.

If you want to know the true boogeyman, look at the one pointing fingers at the imaginary boogeyman, such as folks screaming about transgendered folks.

We can be all too happy to take out our hate on folks who can’t fight back. Our partners, our kids, the dog, the homeless, migrants, the gender fluid, anyone already downtrodden enough.

The French in 1789 -in part inspired by us- actually understood who the problem really is: aristocracy. We allow the aristocracy (rich trailer trash, in this case) to manipulate us into hating people right next door because of how they voted.

Hate sells weapons and bombs and all kinds of armaments, most especially words.

Oh how easily we are manipulated, Val.

Hate gave us Christofacists who are only too happy to carry AR-15s, murder anyone they don’t like and call Jesus a wimp.

Christians who glorify hate, in other words.

From The Psychology of Hatred, by José I. Navarro, Esperanza Marchena and Inmaculada Menacho, Cadiz, Spain:

Hatred is a strong, negative feeling against the object of the hatred. The hater sees the object of their hatred as bad, immoral, dangerous, or all of this together (Staub, 2003).

If we only address the grotesque politics of the last few years, fanned to flames by foul rhetoric from extremes on all sides, the above underscores how we now see each other across the aisle. A Pew Research study from 2022 (which you can argue, is now on steroids especially after this past election) found:

More recent research now finds that we consider those in the opposite side as “sub-human.”

Wow, folks.

And here’s the kicker, which if you will excuse me, I find hilarious in that godawful way that we cannot, cannot, CANNOT see ourselves:

Republicans and Democrats express increasingly positive views of themselves. While Republicans and Democrats express increasingly negative views of those in the other party, they have become more positive about the people in their party. For example, a majority of Republicans (63%) now say that members of their party are a lot or somewhat more moral than other Americans; about half of Republicans (51%) said that in 2016 and 2019. The share of Democrats who say their fellow Democrats are more moral than other Americans has increased from 38% in 2016 to 51% currently.

Those other guys are stupid, lazy, immoral, repugnant, etc. but OUR guys are gods.

Some of this can be explained by The Dunning-Kruger effect.

Both sides do it. Worse, our compulsive need to be right at the expense of the other guy often destroys any possibility of establishing common ground. That’s just stupid.

Increasingly members of both parties are DONE with their parties, for good reason.

The point is that with just this topic, the election, we see ourselves manipulated to hate, denigrate family members, neighbors, anyone who doesn’t see what we identify with as Good, Right, Godly and the American Way.

Well, excuse me, but bullshit.

Nobody as the right way, and nobody has the answer, and nobody is going to get there by demeaning, attacking and belittling people who don’t agree with us. That is how we end up nuking our planet.

While I don’t have the answers, one thing I know is that we don’t get anywhere by hating. Hate got us death camps. We are headed there fast the way we are buying into this wholesale, unbridled hatred of folks who don’t happen to agree with us.

When we start dehumanizing it’s a very short walk to genocide. Visit any genocide memorial- I have - and you will see where we are headed with this awful rhetoric. Don’t believe me? See this article.

Worse, now we have people who voted the same way we did who are lashing out at each other for DARING to suggest that we might want to find ways to live in some measure of relative harmony with the folks who share our property lines.

And here’s the thing: I understand the anger. I get it. I understand the fear. I get it.

But we don’t have a chance in hell of survival if we default to hate.

Let’s explore how hate works with a lovely analogy from nature.

By Beatriz Moisset - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76953425

Hate behaves like Microgastrinae. Confused?

There’s a species- lots of them- of parasitic wasp that injects a venom, a virus and its eggs into an invertebrate host. The host is infected, the virus prevents the creature’s immune system from working, the eggs hatch and the poor bastard is devoured from the inside out. Sucks, right?

Sci-fi fans will love this:

A study published in the June 25, 2018 issue of the Journal of Hymenoptera Research describes three particularly barbarous Australian parasitoid wasps. The first has been named Dolichogenidea xenomorph by the authors, after the abdomen-bursting creature from the 1979 film "Alien" — the movie aliens are called "xenomorphs," which translates to "strange form" in Greek. These sleek, black insects were reportedly the inspiration for the cinematic extraterrestrials that gave us all parasite phobias if we didn't already have them.

By Ridley Scott (Director) (2003). Alien (DVD). 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Inc., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16476399

In case anyone is slow on the uptake: we allow ourselves to be injected by others’ venom. We allow ourselves to be manipulated by hate. It becomes an infection, a virus inside us and eats us alive from the inside out until it bursts out of us in horrific acts.

You can dislike, disapprove, be uncomfortable. You can choose to educate yourself, learn to live with people unlike you. You can choose to better understand how they came to their beliefs, which might just humanize them.

Here’s what I did this fall.

Last September I was attending a conference in West Texas. At one point, an Arizona woman invited me to drive with her during a five-hour trip from Big Bend National Park back to El Paso. I knew she was a MAGA voter when I got in the car. She didn’t know I was a Harris supporter.

We spent those five hours talking about everything under the sun. Every so often she’d start in about Libtards and Bidenomics. I quietly redirected her to other areas of conversation where we had plenty in common.

The result? We spent those five hours in harmony and hilarity. We agreed on some 90% of the issues, just not the person to move us forward. What struck me was how much we agreed. She only listens to Fox, and the venom in it has shaped her world view.

The same way if we only listen to far left views, that venom will shape our world view.

Deb was a gift in many ways. We’re still in touch. I deeply appreciate people who push me to learn, to stretch, to understand. Of course it’s not comfortable. But such efforts make us a better person, a better citizen, and someone that folks can have a conversation with that doesn’t devolve into a shouting match of insults.

Didn’t say make best buddies with folks you vehemently disagree with. I AM saying don’t succumb to hate.

We all too often hate what we refuse to understand. If we understand more, we might have to change our minds about how Those Guys are stupid, lazy, subhuman.

I’m a journalist. I’m also a humanist. I regularly invest time speaking with people whose views don’t align with mine. I also happen to care a great deal about many of them. That informs me, it provides perspective, understanding and a goodly amount of grace.

Judging from some of the feedback on my post, apparently I have become sub-human if I refuse to hate people who voted for The Other Guy. I removed it, by the way, I’m done with reading that kind of thing.

I refuse to be infected with that venom and let the eggs of hatred eat me from the inside out. I choose to populate my world with people who think and vote differently. That keeps me sane, informed, and engaged.

I don’t have the time of life left in me to spend it hating. Do you? Is that how you want to live your life?

Fellow Substacker

Shawn Michel de Montaigne

posted the following note which speaks volumes for me:

So today my partner and I went for a late breakfast with our neighbors, Tom and Bonnie. Tom and Bonnie are hard-core Trump supporters. I mean Hard Core.

When we needed to move earlier this year, Tom was absolutely indispensable in helping us get ready. Without his assistance, in fact, that move would have been impossible. He helped us effect repairs, consolidate items, move shit, and so on and so forth. He was kind and helpful and willing to bend over backwards at a moment’s notice, no questions asked, offers to pay him rebuffed immediately.

He knows my politics; he knows my partner’s too. I told him almost the first day I met him several years ago when he went off about Joe Biden. I kindly informed him that I was a lifelong Democrat and that yeah, I too have issues with Joe Biden, but I have many more about Donald Trump, so let’s just be neighbors and drop the politics, shall we? He grudgingly went along with that, though every other conversation or so he’d drop in the latest conspiracy theory or some such, which I pointedly ignored.

We moved to the same park (we live in an RV, as does Tom and Bonnie). I helped Tom find a spot here. They were having trouble locating a new place to live. (The housing shortage is severe in Oregon; the new Trump regime is going to make that a hundred times worse, FYI.) Our new park is both owned and managed by progressives, which upsets Tom and Bonnie greatly. They keep looking for a new place to move, sure the management or owners are going to enact some nasty “Democrat” plot to harm them.

Backstory aside, we have on a roughly monthly basis gone to eat out with them, usually breakfast. It’s been mostly a pleasant affair. Mostly. Both Tom and Bonnie occasionally drop in their politics, and I instantly deflect and change the conversation, or my partner if I’m not fast enough. Neither she nor I ever talk about our political views, as in ever. I have always considered such topics bad manners in mixed company, as well as religion. It just isn’t done.

Today’s breakfast, the first outing we’ve had since Felonious Fuckface “won” the election, was different. Both of them were continually dropping politics and conspiracies into the conversational fare. My partner and I deflected, as usual. To give you an example of some of the batshit crazy we deal with, several days ago a tsunami warning was issued for my community after a 7.0 shaker occurred off the coast of Eureka, California. Bonnie, with a straight face, her fork hovering anxiously over her eggs, breathlessly said, “It’s being investigated now: people are checking radiation levels over the epicenter!”

Said I: “Oh, and why’s that?”

Bonnie: “Because Joe Biden may have set off a nuclear bomb—a false flag operation!”

I choked as I stifled laughter while attempting to sip coffee. My partner had to slap my back a couple of times. Seriously. That happened. Like out of a dumb-ass sitcom or something.

I didn’t have to deflect. My choking did it for me.

They are in their early 70s, Tom and Bonnie. Tom is showing signs of dementia. I’m not a medical professional, so I can’t be sure. His behavior is what I’ve seen in the past a lot of times from folks who ended up with dementia. He seemed intent on dropping political bombs today, but not totally aware he was doing it, like a dam had broken within him.

These people literally voted to have active harm come to my partner and I. My partner is queer. I just started collecting social security. I have preexisting medical conditions. My partner is disabled.

But they also voted for active harm to come to themselves. It’s astonishing, the herd identity shit. It’s more important to many people than their own heartbeats are (remember COVID?). I can’t wrap my mind around it. I just can’t.

So why do we continue to subject ourselves to their toxic shit? It’s a valid question. They are lonely people, and yeah, I feel compassion for them. Their kids are strangers. Their relatives too.

They have been extremely helpful to us—and continue to be. Bonnie dropped by the other day and apologized all over herself for her and Tom not coming by when the tsunami warning sounded. She was genuinely distraught for forgetting to do that. Tom selflessly continues to help us out, free of charge. We don’t feel indebted to these two: we are indebted to them. That’s just fact. So we go out to breakfast with them every month or so and keep them company and politely deflect, deflect, deflect. I can honestly say—and this hurts to say it, it truly does—that I love those two, as fucked up as they are politically and morally, as totally brainwashed as they are.

I can’t change them. My partner can’t either. That’s factual as well.

So here I am writing this, swimming in a great grey sea of moral uncertainty and angst, not to mention some self-loathing and the salty, bitter tinge of hypocrisy.

Fucking hell. Seriously.

Thanks for reading.

Thank you Shawn. Precisely my point. I really like my neighbors and I have a hard time with their politics. But as Shawn says, I can’t change them. Won’t try. And I Will. Not. Hate.

Nelson Mandela didn’t become Mandela by hating his captors. We do not become better people by hating what we refuse to understand.

We become sub-human when we succumb to hate. All I ask is that we notice, that we understand the costs, and that we also understand the implicit invitation to do better.

I’m not a believer in this sense, but Christ was no wimp. He understood the power of grace.

S/he who hates, becomes what they hate most.
S/he who offers grace, receives it.

Doesn’t mean you stop working for what you believe to be a better way forward. But a better way forward doesn’t have hate heating every cobblestone along the way, setting you and everything else on fire.

Let’s do better, so that we can still play.

Photo by raquel raclette on Unsplash

These are interesting times. We can make them better by starting inside us. If this was insightful or thoughtful for you please consider supporting my work.

Above all, find the grace within. It spreads out from there.