So…. I sent out a tweet a few days ago about hate. It said basically that you don’t gain anything by hating and that the “hater” loses more than the “hated.” That’s it, it didn’t say anything about who hated, why anyone would hate, it mentioned no name, no race, no sexual preference, no political affiliations, nothing.
Immediately after sending it out, and I mean immediately, I started getting replies about how stupid liberal democrats are and how republicans make it hard not to hate. In short, I received a bunch of hate-filled replies agreeing that hate was terrible but blaming either democrats or republicans for making it impossible not to hate.
I’m going to guess here but I’m betting it was Republicans blaming Democrats and Democrats blaming Republicans.
Other people blamed gays for hate, or Muslims, or TV news, or cops, or blacks, or whites, it went on and on and on. Thankfully, there were some people who simply agreed with me. (There is hope!)
Really people! Really!
Has it come to that? Have we come to the point that the only way to deal with someone who has views different from our own is to hate them?
Exhibit A (exhibit A is so strong that I won’t even present an exhibit B) is President Obama’s new Twitter account. He owned the record for gaining 1,000,000 followers faster than anyone else, at least until Caitlyn came along. That’s an official statistic, here’s a less official stat… his Twitter account also instantly became filled with more hate than any Twitter account in the history of Twitter.
People actually tweeted stuff that immediately earned them a visit from the Secret Service. These people just couldn’t control their hate for the President long enough to restrain themselves from publicly displaying their bigotry.
Now just so we are clear, I proudly voted AGAINST President Obama twice. Admittedly I pressed the pencil against the paper ballot a little harder the second time. I almost completely disagree with his policies and beliefs. I think he is taking the country in the wrong direction.
But hating him for it is just backwards thinking. It’s also counterproductive. It accomplishes nothing. It does no more good to hate him than it does to hate anyone. As a person he seems like a guy who would be a lot of fun to hang out with. I’d bet he enjoys debating and justifying his positions. He just seems like a nice guy, a nice guy who is wrong (yes, I’ve considered the possibility that it could be me who is wrong but I got over that pretty quickly 😉) about a bunch of stuff but a nice guy just the same. I don’t like his positions and thinking but I kinda like him as a person.
There used to be a time when people, even good friends, could disagree and still remain friendly. The world was better then, the world made more sense. People could agree to disagree and go have a beer.
Today we seem to hate for the sake of hating, there is no middle ground, we either agree with someone or we hate them. We hate because of race, financial status, religious beliefs, nationality, the sports teams we cheer for, you name it, we can hate because of it. Folks, when a guy can nearly be beaten to death for cheering for the “wrong” team at a baseball game while dozens of other “fans” watch, we have a problem.
It’s just plain wrong. No one in the world gains a thing from hating another person. We are losing our humanity because of hate. We now seem to be blaming the people that we hate for causing us to hate. We accept no responsibility for hating, instead we place the blame on the hated.
Now I know that not everyone hates and I don’t mean to say they do but these days more people than not seem to hate. That is not a good thing. That is most definitely not a good thing.
The great President Abraham Lincoln once said “I don’t like that man. I most get to know him better.”
Can you do what President Lincoln suggested? Can you postpone hatred long enough to give a person different from yourself a chance to prove their life, and viewpoint, matters too? Do you think it’s possible that we could ever return to the days when we “allowed” people who think differently than we do to exist without being hated. I realize hate has and always will exist but it’s really getting out of control. It affects every aspect of life.
Hate is not sustainable, it will either destroy the hated or more likely, it will destroy the hater, but hate always eventually destroys.
Hate is a choice, you can choose not to let it in your life or you can choose to embrace it and accept the consequences. Whichever you choose understand this fact; your responsible for your own hate, not the person you chose to hate.
Maybe understanding that will make it just a bit harder to hate… maybe.