Love and Anger

First of all, Nick, don't let anyone chide you for long winded comments. I get windy in my posts, why not the commenters?

I agree that hate is a bad thing in general.

I much prefer Justice.

But with the improbability of seeing Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld standing in the Hague, hate will have to do for this flawed liberal. Feel free to consider yourselves better people than me. Tell me again how you don't hate the people who flew jet airliners into the WTC and the Pentagon. Oh that's not very fair, is it?

I find it amusing, however, that after decades of hate from the Right, the most vociferous proponents of civility and peaceful coexistence come from the Right; hate has served them well and continues to do so.

Go read Malkin, or Limbaugh, or Protein Wisdom, or Free Republic, or Townhall, or watch Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck. Hate is an integral part of the Republican dog whistle political base.

It is ironic that after years of ridiculing pacifists for wanting to unilaterally disarm, now the Right is piously claiming it needs to be done to save political discourse. Of course, pointing out that their policies toward gays, and blacks, and latinos, and poor people are hate filled is beyond the pale.

Johnny Lydon said "Anger is an energy". Maybe Hate isn't the same thing; maybe it's not hate so much I feel as it is Anger. If I saw Bush on the street, I wouldn't hurt him, after all; I don't respond like that.

In any case, I see no need to rein in my anger towards the people running this country into disaster while their supporters channel that fecund hatred toward brown and black and liberal people into demographic support.

I know you pretty much live what you say, Nick; however, in general you hitch your political wagon to the Party of Hate and make no complaints about successes that accrue from hate's deployment. After the election of 2000 which culminated in angry protests in Florida aimed at stopping a lawful counting of votes and ultimately, an improper partisan vote from the Supreme Court that unnecessarily humiliated the Democrats , the gleeful refrain heard from the Right was "Get Over it!"

Or are you saying, like some Dirty Fucking Hippie, that we should be combating Hate with Love, Man?

Hell with this as a comment. It's going up top. You know, it may not be the most pleasant thing to think of on Thanksgiving, but you can also think of the people dying in Iraq as a result of the politics of Hatred practiced by the Republicans; and as Bono sang on Bob Geldof's song many years ago "... tonight thank God it's them instead of you."

And tell me again how I shouldn't hate the people who did that.