Hate Sometimes those of us who have certain interests get frustrated. I just heard someone talking about the toll political opinions are taking on people and it couldn’t help but make me think how divided we have become. They were talking about how some families have split up over their political opinions and how life long friendships have been wrecked. It makes me wonder if there is something wrong with us as a race. Why do we get this excited over anything to the extent it would affect our family relations? Politics has become extremely bitter, much more so than when I was younger. It started out being a bitter deal, but as time went by it mellowed a little until the bitterness reemerged. In the beginning of our nation people would fight duels over political opinions. I think there are some today who would welcome this option again. Could it be one of the biggest problems is not the politics itself, but the fact religious belief has taken a nose dive, after all that did give some people a safety valve. They would think twice before hating another person for their opinion, but today hate is everywhere. What is hate? One definition of it is dislike intensely or passionately, feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward. There is a lot more to the definition, but I think you get the idea. Looking at hate we see it brought to the forefront in the news every day. Take the headline about a homeless man killing four other homeless men. Why did he hate them so? I can’t be sure but it seems he hated them because they were homeless like he was and they reminded him of his current situation. He had been thrown out of his home by his family so he was very angry before he even saw them. There seems to be a problem with depression among the population which is partially caused by some not getting their way, being without a job, having PTSD and so forth. Add to that the huge drug problem in this country and throw in alcoholism and you get a witches’ brew of problems which lead to hate. When we talk about situations such as these, we find a lot of hate. The druggies hate the police for interfering with their getting drugs. Some of the homeless hate the police because they are feeling hassled when they are moved. Some citizens of our bigger cities hate the police because they feel the police are not doing their jobs when the homeless are everywhere. The police hate the mayors and governors who they feel are preventing them from doing their jobs. The citizens of the city hate the homeless who they see defecating in the streets and laying all over the sidewalks and sleeping and defecating in the subways. If people want to hate there are plenty of excuses, they can make for it. Some reasons for hate are quite reasonable such as hating diseases, but hating people is a who other ballgame. There are also different degrees of hate. Take for example an underperforming athlete on your favorite team. You will often hear how that guy is hated and yet most people would never wish him harm. They would rather wish he gets traded to another team. On the other hand, politics is different. There are people in our society who hate some politicians so deeply they wish they would die and have expressed this publicly. There are people in society who have been hurt so deeply they still hate a race of people who are the descendants of those who performed the hateful deeds. If we look at the Nazis and the millions of Jews and others, they killed in concentration camps we can still find some descendants who hate Germans. While we know this is wrong, we can almost understand why. I truthfully don’t know how I would feel if I had been in that situation. I had met a man who had been in a Japanese concentration camp during World War II and still hated anything Japanese such as cars, television sets and other things and would get angry to find you had one or more of these objects. We are entitled to have our own opinions on things but we can react to these opinions in an uncivilized way. When I used to be on a bowling team there was a guy in the league who hated it so much when he bowled a bad game, he would kick the ball return and throw the bowling ball at something. I find it hard to think anyone would say this was acceptable behavior. He hated not winning so much he was dangerous. I later found out he had been kicked off the police force because of behavioral problems. Hate is insidious. It seems to grow inside of us. I think at one time or another we might all have been guilty of hating something or someone, but most of us handled it without a problem. Others have stabbed someone multiple times because they didn’t like them. Take street gangs for example. They hate each other and think nothing of killing off the opposition and the hate is so severe they don’t care if they have to kill innocent people to accomplish this. We see this many times when there is a drive by shooting and innocents get shot. They seem to have no qualms about young children being shot and killed either. When you are in the military you are taught to hate your enemy and do everything in your power to kill him before he kills you. People who serve in war zones who carry out this doctrine for a while find it very hard to exist in society later on. Some suffer conscience problems when they return and also have problems when they are in stressful situations. It is very hard to unhate. When a vet is in a situation where he is being pushed around it can revert back to his training and snap if he was unstable when he returned to society. I can truthfully say there is no one I hate. That doesn’t mean I like everyone. It means while I may not like someone, I do not wish them any type of harm. As I got older, I realized there was no reason for hate since it just makes you miserable, does nothing to the person you hate and might even affect your health. Life is so much more comfortable when you don’t hate.
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