The Politics of Hate
Watching a woman rant about how the only “right” thing to do is to cut her parents out of her life because they don’t have her political views made me sick. It made me miss my parents all over again.
More than anything else the left has done to my country, the unending hate dividing families is the most evil. It seems to flow in only one direction, from the left against the right.
My parents were right leaning until late in their lives. They drank the Obama Kool-Aid and were lost. They talked about the Republican candidates as evil, horrible people. The only “news” they watched was CNN.
During Trump’s first term, it got even worse. It was a constant repeat of CNN talking points and hating on Trump.
I quickly learned to keep my opinions to myself in political areas. I loved my parents. Their political stance did not change that, nor did it split them from me.
My wife has been fighting this for longer than I have. Since her father passed, most of the family older than her have gone full TDS. She doesn’t express her opinion.
Because I am who I am, I don’t need to talk to my friends every day. A year can go by, and then we are together as if it was only yesterday. One of my friends, and Ally’s best friend, contracted TDS during Trump’s first term.
We continued to be “friends,” but couldn’t talk freely around her because of the hate that spewed from her when anything Trump was mentioned. The reason she became a Trump hater was because of Dobbs. According to her, her reproductive care had been stripped from her and her daughters.
The state laws didn’t change. Her access to abortion hadn’t changed. Her daughters’ access to abortion hadn’t changed. She is postmenopausal, so she can’t get pregnant. Her eldest daughter is married and busy making babies. Her youngest isn’t sexually active with men.
For her, the issue was that if her daughter was raped, and if her daughter conceived, and if her daughter wanted an abortion, and if her daughter lived in a state that had banned abortions for rape survivors, her daughter would have to leave that state to get an abortion. Because the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was a state issue, it was Trump’s fault for putting his pick of Justices on The Court.
After Trump was elected to his second term, she posted that if you voted for Trump, she couldn’t be friends with you. She has been written off. Not because she has TDS, but because she kicked us to the curb for not agreeing with her political views.
I’m watching postings from people in New Hampshire on local groups. Everything “bad” is Trump’s fault. The school system’s business administrator appears to be responsible for the school system being short more than $5 million. It’s Trump and the MAGAot’s fault for not wanting to fund schools.
It is MAGA’s fault for electing a Republican governor. Nobody bothers to notice that the elected school board, which oversees the business administrator, were all elected by them. And they all appear to be Democrats.
But the blame goes to the Republicans.
If you are anti-gun, I don’t hate you. If you want to take my rights away, then I will fight you. Hate requires too much energy to engage in. Yet it seems to drive the left.
There was a church shooting. As soon as the media reported it, the left started yelling it was MAGAots. They blamed me and you because we own guns. And they hate on us.
I’m reading The Red Badge of Courage with one of my ESL students. The civil war pitted brother against brother, father against son, neighbor against neighbor, but the level of hate for family and friends didn’t seem to be there. Yes, soldiers and civilians were disgusted by the other team, but I haven’t read about brothers disowning each other because of the side they chose.
And the left continues the battle to fill our lives with hate. They keep telling us who to hate, and the left listens and falls in line.