Calling Mr. Hate

Clearly, there’s something wrong, on the ground, aimed away from financially-secure white male privilege, and toward women, non-whites, the poor, immigrants, and even the elderly. Every effort should be made to rectify the oppression, balance the inequity, and grind the ass-covering elite class into dust.

But it’s the rhetoric I can’t tolerate, because it’s sloppy and dumb as fuck – specially, the worldwide protests following the murder of George Floyd that purport to object to, via millions of hand-painted signs, “hate.” No more hate. Stop hate now. We hate hate.

Got to be kidding me. First of all, “hate” is a feeling, a personal, subjective and flexible reaction, to almost anything, and you can’t eradicate it. Like the calls to “unite” in the face of Shithead’s very obvious efforts to foment a kind of virtual second Civil War, eliminating “hate” – if it were possible – would only mean becoming members of an Orwellian totalitarian state, or a herd of H. G. Wells’ affectless Eloi. Imagine if we were all to “unite” and ban principled disagreement, and then erase “hate,” and all feel nothing but uncritical kindness and acceptance, of everything and everyone. We’d have all the fire and wisdom of a field of weeds, waiting to be mowed.

And of course it’s not possible anyway – saying “no more hate” is like trying to outlaw desire. Hate is an integral human material, and nothing short of mass lobotomies will make it disappear. Of course, what the protestors really mean is “hate for other people we don’t know by virtue of their race or sexuality or something.” This makes perfect sense; you can only hate people you don’t know if you’re a pig-headed bigot. So why don’t they say so? Be specific. “Hate” is so broad a term it renders social debate meaningless.

That said, I reserve the right to hate. I hate a lot of things and a lot of people. My don’t-know-them rule above is an awkward fit; I hate most politicians, and would happily push most of them into my Proverbial Lava Pit of My Dreams, although I’ve met very few. I don’t know Donald Trump, but dream every day of his impending death. I also hate most recent Top 40 music, most TV sitcoms, self-pity disguised as “essays” in The New York Times, grown-ups who read YA fiction, restaurants serving “bowls,” all superhero movies, historical ignorance, the fact that radio broadcasting has gotten so “diverse” they hire people with speech impediments, and poison ivy. I really hate poison ivy.

But say I also reserved the right to hate, say, Greeks. Or gay men who talk like my Aunt Margie. Or thick-necked Italian-American men who work in investment finance and deeply believe that “greed is good” and high-five when they land 5% of a too-large deal some billionaire never should’ve been allowed to make. Or thick-necked Italian-American men who work sewage-pumping trucks or own shitty suburban pizzerias and yet still crow and puff and bellow as though they are Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Or thick-necked Italian-American men generally.

What about it? If it’s my hate, it’s mine, keep your mitts off it. The key difference is if I were to act on it – somehow inflict my dumb jungle spite on those Italian-American gentlemen, without whom we’d have no cement front yards or leather-beaten veal dishes -- and I’d be up for a good blowback, and deservedly so. This is not a new principle: feelings are feelings, keep them to yourself (they’ll probably change anyway), control yourself and let others alone. If you don’t, if you stupidly let the murder hornets out of the jar, then expect the social forces that be to return to your door and fuck you right up.

If you don’t, if you just harbor your hate yourself and understand the difference between your inner perspective and everyone else’s inherent rights, then there shouldn’t be a problem, no protest can tell you how to feel, and your hate, which if you’re like me you nurse like a baby koala, is free to scorn and gripe and growl in the privacy of your own skull.