I Can’t Be About Hate
It’s New Year’s Day, 2019. I was born in 1956, so for my generation it’s kind of amazing — 2019: where are the Dick Tracy wrist-radios and the robot maids? For those of us who once marked punch cards to run on the “main frame” computer and used a slide rule, we now have more computing power in our pocket than filled those main frame rooms. Wrist “radios” are now common place, and that thing running around the floor annoying the dogs, well that IS the robot maid!
My generation has been through a lot. The children of World War II veterans, many of us grew up in suburban “Leave it to Beaver” neighborhoods. We hid under desks from nuclear bombs, and became more aware of our societies inequities. We marched for civil rights, against the war in Vietnam, and for a cleaner world. We lived through the assassinations, Watergate, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union. We thought that would be the beginning of a new era of peace and prosperity, both here at home and abroad. It didn’t quite work out that way.
That inequities thing came back to haunt us. Here in America, one percent of Americans has 40% of the wealth. While the US may be the wealthiest nations in the world, with almost one and a half times the GDP of China, the next on the list, our standard of living is only ranked seventeenth. Our income inequality creates enormous tensions.
In the world these same kinds of inequities have encouraged extremism. In the Middle East, that extremism can be seen in the political radicalism of Al Qaeda and ISIS, and the increasing authoritarianism in Turkey and Egypt. Just as Marxism spread through the upheavals in the Colonial world of the 1950’s and 60’s, political extremism in the guise of “religion” has found fertile ground from the teeming streets of Gaza to the far mountains of Afghanistan to the slums of Manila.
As a political science student at Denison University in the 1970’s, I learned a theory of Revolution. Revolutions; movements that overthrow governments and societies, don’t happen when things are “at their worst.” Revolutions aren’t born out of despair, they arise out of crushed possibilities; they happen when there is “hope for change” and that hope is dashed. In our world today, where the farthest regions are connected together by wireless communication and the internet may be more prevalent than running water; inequality is on display. The farthest flung village can see what they cannot have.
In the United States many have turned to “tribalism,” a euphemistic term for blind loyalty to a “side.” I heard it described as politics turned into religion; it no longer is a question of policy and program, but of unyielding “faith” in a political group. No wonder it’s so difficult to have discussions, we aren’t talking about issues anymore, but our “religion.” Mom always said not to talk religion at the dining room table, it was the surest way to ruin the meal (we weren’t allowed to criticize the Queen either, Mom was very British.) Our “tribe” is now our politics; we talk among our fellow “tribesmen” like new acolytes to the faith, and disdain the “non-believers” on the other side.
It can’t be about hate. We may disagree with “the other side” either here in our nation or in the world, we may hate some of the actions they take, but we cannot hate them. If there is hate, there is no opportunity for redemption; we cannot show mercy or understanding for those we hate. We need to see why they have chosen “their side.” Here in the United States, Trump supporters have lost trust in our institutions, and are looking to a “1% of 1%” man to lead to greater equality. If that’s not “your tribe,” still recognize that our nations inequities have made Trump possible, and encouraged the growth of racism and intolerance.
In many parts of the world, where unmanned weapons can rain cold death from the sky, we must recognize that those “tribes” might well turn to extremism as the only alternative to powerlessness. They see inequity, and they follow leaders who offer “easy” solutions. It is to overcome powerlessness that a seventeen year-old boy is convinced to strap on a suicide vest; we cannot change what we cannot understand – so understand. It is the same for the school-shooter here at home.
I can’t hate. I can’t hate here at home, but I can continue to try to reason and explain. I can’t hate abroad, but I can continue to reach for those who have not chosen extremism. I can work for a better nation and world, for more equality in wealth and values. I am a small voice, but if small voices band together, they become powerful. Powerful not with the short-term destructive power of hate, but for the long-term improvements brought by compassion and understanding.
