On Being Hated In a Nation of Assholes

[babylonsister]

I find this so sad, because it's true. :(

http://www.openleft.com/diary/14535/on-being-hated-in-a-nation-of-assholes

On Being Hated In a Nation of Assholes
by: David Sirota
Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 09:15

Had the distinct displeasure of seeing your drivel printed in my local paper recently. Although I recognize that all liberals are drooling buffoons, I must say you are one of the more bone-stupid liberals I've ever run across. How is it, I often wonder, that all liberals are so incredibly stupid? Is it in your DNA? Or do you just absorb all this stupidity naturally, while attending government run indoctrination centers (public schools).

In any case, I hope that with newspapers going broke all over, in record time, that you soon find yourself living in a cardboard box under the nearest overpass.

Cheers!

That is one of the scores of typical hate letters I receive after one of my newspaper columns is published. In a normal week, I get about 40 such letters (plus a good deal of positive ones), and on top of that, the comments section of my columns - where posted online - are filled with stuff that's very similar. And, of course, there are the hateful - and very personal - comments left by people on some of my blog posts (although, not much here).*

snip//

Most often, the haters have succeeded in turning political discourse into a war of attrition against their personal demons -a war won by those who can go nuclear the fastest.

That's clearly been the story of the summer on health care - and it continues to be the story on most major issues. I mean, conservatives are quite literally calling the president's plan to promote the value of education to the nation's schoolchildren a secret socialist plot. All of it has convinced me we are living through one of the darkest periods in the last 50 years - one in which intense hatred has now become an accepted - even celebrated - part of our democracy.

For me personally, if I had to predict, I'd guess that this escalation will ultimately get me out of the writing/blogging/activism game at some point in the future. Ultimately, enough gray hair, chest pain, and hurt feelings just gets tiresome - and dangerous to one's health. But my personal decisions are not really important to anyone other than me and my family. What's significant in the broader sense, I think, is the overall trend and what it means for our country.

I'll put it bluntly: We are becoming a nation of haters - a nation, really, of assholes, or at least dominated by assholes. And sure, maybe we've always been that way - but what's different is that it's become almost impossible to pretend otherwise. There's no more delusions, no more fantasies. Despising one another and ignoring the substance of issues has become the defining mark of Americanness in the 21st century - and that's a tragedy.

* Just to be clear, when I refer to "hate," I'm not referring to disagreements on principle/substance. We have a lot of those here at OpenLeft - and those are healthy and constructive and important. When I refer to "hate," I'm referring to the kind of impulses epitomized in that one rather typical piece of hate mail. Hate is easy to spot - it's like obscenity: you know it when you see it.

[Tansy_Gold]

1. Someone posted on another thread the title of a song from

Rogers and Hammerstein's "South Pacific"

"You've got to be carefully taught."

It's about how hate is taught to us. We aren't born with it. And there is nothing "they" fear more than their lily white children sitting all wide-eyed in a classroom and seeing -- GASP! HORRORS! -- an 'articulate' (gag me with a fucking spoon) black man as President of the United States of America.

It was okay when that buffoon booosh (all apologies to buffoons) sat in a classroom and could barely keep up while the first graders read "The Pet Goat." The president can be an ignorant nincompoop as long as he's a white one. But God forbid they see a black man up there.

"God" couldn't forbid it, because the good goddess decided it was damn fucking time those ignorant doofuses were carefully taught a different lesson. And she's gonna make sure their kids learn it too. Maybe a few of them won't be taught just to hate.



Tansy Gold

[babylonsister]

4. I found your post strangely

comforting, Tansy. Thanks. At least you hold out hope there's a possibility of learning not to hate.

And I love that song-it does apply here, doesn't it.

[Tansy_Gold]

7. Remember that Pandora's Box was full of all the ills in the world...

but that it also contained Hope. And hope was all that was left.

If we don't have hope -- and I admit that I get pretty discouraged myself at times -- then we might as well wrap our lips around the tailpipe and suck it all in.


I'm not ready to kiss the tailpipe. . . . .yet.



TG

[GreenEyedLefty]

2. It's okay... I'm hated, too. As is anyone else who has both a brain and a heart.

[Joanne98]

3. Embrace the hate. Enjoy it.

[Ozymanithrax]

5. The problem with going Nuclear

The debate continues to get uglier. Rather than discuss solutions to an issue on merit, too many people take ownership of that issue and consider any disagreement a personal attack.

They resort to a form of virulent hate speech, and ratchet up the rhetoric regularly.

In any situation, there comes up time when people can no longer escalate with words. My concern is that at some point in the near future, those people who go nuclear with their rhetoric will escalate to a more physical form of hatred. We've already seen it with people carrying guns to Presidential rallies, threatening violence if we don't accept their ideas.

Our hatred is tearing us apart, and if we don't find a way past this, it can kill us.

[sui generis]

6. not to worry. That's the best and the worst they've got is ill wishes

Pretty lame actually.

Liberals change the world. Conservatives hate change, therefore conservatives hate liberals.

the difference is the world changes on its own. Liberals don't hate the world any more than you hate your steering wheel. In an odd way, liberals don't hate conservatives as a general rule, any more than we hate sharks. Sharks just are. The world we live in is the vehicle we ride on our journey through life. Why not navigate - so we don't run the world off the road by being stupid. Why not navigate so everyone riding in the car gets equal treatment, access to water, health, resources, and perhaps even happiness.

If conservatives hate liberals and want us living in boxes under bridges, who is going to bail their asses out the next time a hurricane or forest fire or earthquake or just good ol' unemployment makes them live in the box next to us? I'll bet you a liberal would share his last crust of bread without asking whether you were conservative or liberal.

That's the difference. The other difference is, when you give enough into life, it gives back. Liberals planning for housing and healthcare means fewer people living in boxes under bridges, regardless of their social leanings.

What has a conservative done for you, personally, lately?

[Doctor_J]

8. My hope: That I am around long enough to help put these traitors down

Eventually our people will have had enough, and fight back. I hope the revolution comes in time for me to help wipe out every last Limbecile in America.

[Better Today]

9. I think he is missing a key word that is why this hatred is so pervasive and

won't go away soon. That word is "righteous," in these cases should be referred to as "perceived righteous hatred," since we all know it isn't righteous, but man those folks truly believe it is. I'm just flabbergasted by the oxymoronic thinking that I am surrounded by in this bluedog oasis in this fireengine red state. Neighbors who are teachers in the public system and got their degrees late in life through grants are nonetheless against socialist programs, folks who had to file bankruptcy not once but twice for medical bills (back when it was easier, don't know what they will do this next round with the tougher filing requirements now), people whose houses are under water and are about to be foreclosed, families that are nearly constantly on the welfare dime for food stamps and such (lots of Mormons here, always on the state/fed dime, but then vote staunch republican, go figure). It truly boggles the mind how stupid, angry, and hateful they have become in the past decade; and the saddest part is that they honestly believe they are in a "righteous" position.

[Mopar151]

18. Rightousness is a drug

Similar in effect to cocaine. Adding religion, racisim, or some personality disorders is akin to "cracking" the basic drug.

[Joe Chi Minh]

10. I love the way, Dumbo finishes his scrawl, "Cheers!" Tee! Hee! It's

obviously he that needs cheering up and that badly.

And it ain't going to change for him and his fellow pond-life invertebrates any time soon. In fact, ever. They are the detritus of a fallen world, we're on the verge of leaving behind. Enjoy their cries of anguish and impotent fury. Especially, Dumbo's above.

Call me a crypto-Republican if you like, but there are times when I see those gross, obscene masks of rage of theirs they call their faces, in photos of the tea-baggers and the like, when I catch myself thinking wouldn't it be nice to mow them all down with a machine gun; then watch a clip of it in slow-motion. Hell's own spawn, Christ compared unfavourably with the dumb beasts in his parable of Lazarus and the rich man. It seems such a long time since God culled the ranks of the Egyptians so radically.

And then I read a quote like that one of His Nibs above, and I think no, this is so much more fun. Revenge, as they say, is a dish best served cold? Mayonnaise, anyone?

[Gregorian]

11. Hahaha. I have to laugh. For this to be in the open is really quite satisfying.

I think most people were busy working or having families during the years when I was a fugitive in my own country. I grew cannabis when I was younger. There were twenty years when I was persecuted in my own country. And no one seemed to care that it was happening. The stories of guys having their homes forfeited. Draconian. Even liberals were silent. Well there were a few. High Times was all we had. There was no internet.

It may seem unrelated, but it isn't. It, like the conservatives who plague our democracy, was an authoritarian scheme to demonize and control a specific group. In a way, we were terrorized. Every time my doorbell rang; every time a copter flew over the property. I eventually grew tired of it and gave it up. But the context is with us. The backdrop of this country is a course, reckless kind of sentiment. Or lack of sentiment, to be honest. Careless. Blind. It's the kind of mind that has no problem that a guy in a room with a joystick is killing people far away.

Well, I left a conservative area for one that rivals Berkeley in it's liberal political bent. It's pretty nice here.

Maybe my point is meaningless for those who just woke up when Bush stole office. But for those who have been living this nightmare since Reagan, or before, to be honest, it's almost comical to see the light shining on it. At least it's soothing. Maybe people are waking up. I thought that's what the Summer of Love was all about. I still don't know what happened to that atmosphere. Well, it lives in my town. There's a little of it left, between the cars and tourists.

[Uncle Joe]

19. I believe you've nailed another inconvenient truth, when some citizens

are deemed expendable, with their civil rights, freedom and privacy continually assaulted, it's only a matter of time before the short sighted mindless hatred which led to their exclusion spreads to other segments of the population.

[mudplanet]

12. If you're not really, really, pissing off the assholes

you're not doing anything right.

[abq e streeter]

13. FDR:"They are unanimous in their hate for me AND I WELCOME THEIR HATRED"

[laststeamtrain]

14. I take a kind of solace in the awareness that 'haters' are usually dumb.

I hate stupidity so I guess I'm a hater too.

Haters seem to have obsessions. It's easier than thinking & it leaves more time for marinating their so-called minds in pop culture dumbness.

We're doomed.

There's gazillions of dollars spent everyday on convincing the masses that what's bad is good & the masses just can't seem to say "no".

DU is filthy with hate. Hate Hate Hate all day long.

Here's my most recent favorite dumb hate thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8622484

We're doomed. Hence, my default setting.

People will respond with hatred to this post. I will hate their responses.

Eh. Who cares? It's just another day in paradise. Have a good one. :hi:

[babylonsister]

15. Well...

you made me laugh! :hi:

Yea, DU's getting pretty out there, too. I don't see an end in sight, because there will always be a 'next' issue for people to hate on.

[Daveparts still]

16. We Should Understand Well

That this hatred is based on fear. Fearful people who are losing everything that they own and looking for someone to be held accountable. Can they accept the blame on themselves? Not hardly and so the right becomes the paranoid right.

On the left those of us who are on the true left find the same flame with a different temperature. When we complain that Obama is too much of a moderate and too willing to compromise with those who would prefer you spend your grocery money for health care premiums we find the same fear. And for the same reason. a fear, of fear of losing everything.

[RaleighNCDUer]

20. We have nothing to fear but fear itself -

well, that and the crazy, paranoid, heavily armed right, that is.

[windoe]

17. One reason DU is so important,

we need each other for support. I am temporarily in a rural really red part of the country, it has taken a toll on me somehow. I know I have to move to a more progressive area, a university town, with artists, writers, musicians who live healthier. For now, though, I am writing a lot, doing a lot of art, and know someday I will look back on this place.

[Chester Berthum]

21. Bipartisanshit [sic]

This is an excellent example of why we must toss it overboard in order to get ANYTHING done!

[Joe Chi Minh]

22. They don't seem to be able to grasp that they are now insignificant They are not part.

of the Republican elephant any more. They killed it. Now, they have transformed themselves into just a festering boil on its carcass.

[BREMPRO]

23. it's easier to simply attack the ideology of a writer with hate, than to rationally argue an issue.

it goes both ways, I've seen demonization and deep hatred of conservatives here as well. I think the rise of the anonymous posting on the internet in unmoderated forums has opened people up to say things they would never say to your face. I have a few conservative neighbors and we argue strongly on issues, but in good spirit and with mutual respect. I learn from their point of view, even if i don't agree. I think we've become a more segregated society too- liberals tend to move to liberal states and conservative to Conservative ones. This lack of exposure and the necessity to get along with your neighbors of different political views has become less common, and has increases the vitriol and hate.