Worrying About Hate

A while back, one of these Civic Duty columns elicited this simple response from a woman: “Stop the hate!”

At first, I thought she was addressing Trump et al, but recently I feel more like she meant that plea for me. It applies both ways, I guess.

I am learning some things about myself since Trump became president and I started writing these columns. I edited and wrote for underground newspapers back in the day when Vietnam and Nixon were the main copy. I wrote with anger then. Even Nixon, as craven and duplitious as he turned out to be, had at least paid a ton of political dues and acted presidential.

Today, vis a vis Trump, I find myself writing with ongoing hatred. Hatred is not a good or productive emotion, but there it is. It makes me feel, upon reflection, as unclean and unsavory as Trump himself. Not good. Yet I can understand the provocation if not condone it. Nixon was caught up as a fraud and crook over time. He won his second term in a landslide – before the Watergate mess brought him down.

Trump, on the other hand, has given us ample warning in his filthy campaign rhetoric exactly what he is about and his presidency so far has clearly borne out just how far he is willing to go to reduce America to a puppet show with his small and crazed hands pulling the strings.

And this with no evident sign of disapproval or alarm from the craven Republican party who can rid our country of this pestilence. Robert Mueller – if he lasts -- will have to present clear evidence of treason or other high crimes and misdemeanors to bestir these moral zombies. Their political self-preservation is the only motive they understand. Sick dogs.

So I feel the hate well up even as I write my mea culpa about it. Trump has bestirred in me a latent and deep patriotism that actually surprises me at times. This country has survived a wrenching civil war, two rapacious world wars, a deep and scarring financial depression, and a Vietnam war that split the country. Yet we endured. The American spirit prevailed. I am proud of that.

Now comes a veritable monster who seems hell-bent on undoing every sacred American tradition that has been won and protected by the life blood of its citizens. It is a nightmare come alive.

He has tapped into a latent and unclean strain in the American soul and parlayed it into the incipient fascism which is emerging with growing clarity in his presidency. The political gods granted him a perfect storm of discontent, topped by the unfortunate candidacy of Hillary Clinton, and he has blindly ridden it into the chaos and evil that are the true hallmarks of his character and rule.

How can I not hate such a person? How can I not vilify him at every opportunity? How can I wish him anything but ill, total and destructive?

Anger has passed into hate. I will live with that.