HATE

     We all use the word. We hate spinach or we hate romance novels. We hate garbage on the streets or people who push past you to get the last seat in the subway car. We all use the word to portray emotions, some even humorous, but the actuality of hate, well, we need to understand what it is and what it is doing to us as members of the human race and as individuals.
     When was the last time you had a calm conversation about politics with friends or family? In fact, when was it first stated that from now on there would be no more politics in the conversations in order to avoid dissension and shouting and getting to places where no one should be, let alone friends and/or family.
     What frightens me the most, what seems to me to be the visceral face of hatred is exactly that. The faces. Take a look at people who preach hate and hatred, the anger they express, the passions they so desperately try to convey, even as these passions are deadly - yes, deadly, for they kill the souls within us.
     Take a look at the face of Trump when he is spouting his hatefilled statements or discusssing one of his damned tweets. It is ugly, beyond words. The face is twisted, the mouth as well, and the eyes just bug out with the volume of hate, so big, so large, that it almost cannot be contained within one's own body and soul. And that is exactly it.
     Look back through history and find pictorial representations of some of the biggest haters of all time and trust me, it was not limited to Hitler and Mussolini nor Stalin. It was seen on the faces of Inquisition torturers, priests and pastors who railed against the Jews at Easter time, Jewish rabbis who ranted about differing sects, Moslems who warred against members of differing Islamic sects, killing, enslaving, raping. And for what? For what?
     For power. The same reason that men rape women, use rape as a weapon of war. It is the power, the rush it gives a hater. The sex, as awful as it is, is not the end goal, and that is why it is so heinous to see so many men downplaying it and its consequences. 
     It was frightening to see the faces of hatred, twisted and ugly, when members of the Republican party spoke in defense of the sexual deviancy of Kavanaugh. They demeaned Ford, demanding details that thankfully had lost some of their sharp edges. They had the ugliest bug eyed faces - go check the face of Lindsey Graham or of Grassley. Frightening - and telling! No matter what they had spouted off before, the truth came out, the ugly truth.
     Even today, the same man who said that Trump was xenophobic, a racist, now says that if one will hug a Somali woman and tell another to go back home, then that person is not a racist, for he is not condemning all the people of that group. Give me a break!! That is the same line that a Nazi collaborator or adherent would spout off, that his best friend is Jewish, or  his brother is a Communist and on and on, even as they threw the "prey" into the cattle cars, shot them down, stuffed them in the gas chambers and smacked babies against brick walls. Or chased Tutsi through the rivers and jungles, enslaved Yazidis, burned out Rohingya, killed the Hindus, killed the Moslems, the Buddhists, the Armenians, the Serbs and unfortunately we cannot ever seem to reach the end of that line!
     Hate is all encmpassing and forces all else out of the picture, out of the mind. It takes over and if one could do a side by side comparision of a person as hate grew within, one could see the actual physical difference in behavior, in affect, in speech, in deed. Ugly.
     It raises its ugly snout into places where it should never be, so powerful is hate. So a Goodwill executive decides that it is too costly to pay their disabled workers in the job training program. Yup, hurt the very people it is supposed to serve, a G-d given effort, or so we are told. Spout hatred from the pulpit, for G-d has seemingly spoken to the speaker. Throw on the clothes of hatred, be it a white sheet and ridiculous pointed hat, or the red hats of chanters of hatred.
     And the hated grow their own sense and feelings of hate and this blistering, acidic trail of hatred scorches all before it and behind it. There is no escaping it. None. No one is impervious. No one is free. Lest we all think that only the USA is infected with and by this growing trend of hate, think again. Watch the films of the attacks on the marchers in a Pride parade in Poland. Watch and hear the nasty and cruel speeches of dictators as they denigrate their  opponents and the audience chants words of hatred, of physical violence. See the books burn. See the buildings burn. See the people burn. Inevitable.
     The excuse for hate is often given as an improved economy. So Mussolini made the trains run on time. Hitler gave people jobs as he built up industry and the armed forces. Stalin and Lenin and all else gave all jobs and built a teetering economy, a false one. And today, here in America, the economy, which is built on and began in the Obama years, has now devolved into an economy that benefits the 1% rather than the rest of society, those with low paying jobs whose wages are incompatible with a secure life, who do not hold huge shares of industry, the very base that Trunp now appeals to even as he takes away medical care, safety nets, anything that is good for those in need of a helping hand. Their needs and anger are deflected elsewhere and reappear as hate.
     So the wife of a Reverend comes home from Trump's latest rally at Charlottesville and remarks how shaken she was by the anger, by the hate chants. And the target of hate memes is herself a purveyor of racism as she rants against Jews and Zionists - read that as Jews. She, too, needs to be called out as racist and condemned by her party members. There are no exceptions. None.
     Remember the oldie but goodie - We've Got to Live Together - as it sang about the line of unending hatred of the other who then hated another who then hated another ad infinitum? Well, listen to it again and hear its message. We must hear that message. We must fight against the ugly face of hate and the haters. We must, for if not, we are doomed to repeat the deadly errors of mankind, apparently never having learned anything at all. Sad. Dangerous. Terrifying. Full of despair and hopelessness. We must all work together to fix this. The alternative? Well, let's not go there, please.