Thanks for getting back to me! I really appreciate it. Here are some of my thoughts about your statement concerning “the Jeff who posts with such hatred and anger.”
It’s true that I’m angry. Really angry. And I strive to be a person who can let go of the anger and live my life. But every time I ask myself “What would Gandhi do?” or “How would the Dalai Lama keep smiling through such injustice?” I usually answer, “Well, they were/are far better, more highly evolved men than I am!” And I continue to embrace my anger.
I do take exception, however, to the term “hateful.” What you and I consider hateful seem to be quite different. My posts of the last three weeks have been about:
Suggesting that Trump voters stay away from national parks, since their votes contributed to the likely degradation of these natural treasures, was much more appropriate than it was hateful.
Stating that Trump would nominate Manson and Putin to cabinet posts, spineless Senate Republicans would confirm them, and Trump supporters would accept it all, was sarcastic and on the edge of believability, but it wasn’t at all hateful.
Marianne Budde and how she was brave to speak truth to Trump and members of his family – as ungodly a group as you’d find anywhere. That’s not hateful.
Sharing a piece by Lawrence O’Donnell about getting involved. Not hateful.
Calling out Carrie Underwood for singing at Trump’s inauguration. You may not like that I did it, but you can’t call that hateful.
A piece about what we can do to stay sane during Trump’s assault on just about everything we believe in. Not hateful.
A statement proclaiming my dismay at Trump’s inauguration happening on MLK, Jr. Day. I do claim that Trump is a vile man, while MLK, Jr. was a great one. Saying that someone is vile doesn’t constitute hatred, given that anyone who acted similarly to Trump would be considered vile by most people - you included.
I posted a piece by someone who laid out a list of all the things he/I/we won’t accept and work with Republicans on. The list is a good one. No hatred there.
The next one could be construed as mean, but certainly not hateful. It’s the one about why so many liberals find Trump supporters “stupid.” I said that “I don’t think that Trump supporters are stupid, but I do find them to be willfully ignorant and ethnically challenged.” Not nice, but not hateful. I could explain what I meant by that if you want me to.
And then there was my long explanation of my mixed feelings about what to do now. Get involved or sit back and let people who voted for Trump deal with the consequences of their decision. I didn’t say that I wanted women to be assaulted – just that I wondered how men would deal with their daughters being assaulted by men similar to Trump. I didn’t say that I wanted senior Trump voters to become impoverished – just that I wanted to know how they’d deal with tariff-induced inflation and an attack on Social Security. Once again, not hateful at all.
Finally, I think that you consider my ongoing reference to Trump as a Liar-Conman-Felon-Traitor-Rapist as hateful. I don’t see it as hateful in the slightest. I view it as a statement of fact – a demonstrable, easily provable series of accurate descriptions. Well, actually, the term “rapist” is harder to prove, because people and legal jurisdictions have varying definitions of rape; mine may be different than yours, just as the federal definition differs from the state of New York’s, where Trump stood trial.
So, now that I’ve told you what I don’t consider to be hateful, let me tell you what I do.
I believe that Trump’s lies and hideously racist statements about immigrants have been some of the most hateful things I’ve ever seen and/or heard. Some of it was right out of a Nazi playbook. Compare some of his statements to transcripts of Hitler’s speeches and tell me they’re not similar.
Sexually assaulting women is really, really hateful. Justifying it or denying it is hateful.
Helping instigate an insurrection against the U.S. government is hateful. The violence of that mob was hateful. Republican politicians roundly condemned it at the time, but now are rewriting history and claiming that it was a patriotic protest. That’s hateful.
Pardoning all of those involved, including those who had criminal records before Jan. 6th, is hateful.
Wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” tee-shirt was the epitome of hateful. That man was celebrating the attempted extermination of a race. My calling him a racist piece of filth isn’t hateful. Any man who supports the killing of 6 million Jews is racist filth.
So were the many people waving swastika flags. That was hateful.
I believe, and you’ll probably really disagree with this one, that waving or flying the Stars and Bars is hateful. It’s not about celebrating “southern culture.” It’s about glorifying the attempt to create a country with ownership of human beings as its primary organizing principle.
The pardon of Ross Ulbricht, one of the world’s most prolific drug dealers, absolutely infuriates me. He’s up there with any of the worst Latin American drug lords. Remember how I mentioned to you that I don’t use the word “evil” lightly? He’s not only hateful, but evil. Letting him walk the streets goes beyond hateful to absolute evil.
We know a therapist at the VA in San Francisco who has lamented that the office is in chaos. His groups dealing with vet suicide have been cancelled, people have been fired, and others are quitting before they get fired. This is at the VA, an organization charged with helping American veterans! That’s hateful. Anyone who would do that is hateful. And dare I say, anyone who would accept it is hateful.
Bringing much of the work at NIH to a halt is hateful, because research into cancer and other diseases save lives. Decimating the Dept. of Health and Human services, which will soon take place, is hateful.
I could go on and on, but you get the point. You can call me angry all you want, but don’t call me hateful. Responding angrily to hateful things is not hateful. It’s human. But having said all of this, I have to agree with Brene Brown: “When we are in pain and fear, anger and hate are our go-to emotions.” I’m really afraid of living in a time and place that accepts the ugliness of Trumpism, and that fear is frequently manifesting as anger.
(The above piece was written weeks ago. Had it been written yesterday, the list of hateful actions taken by Trump and Musk would be pages and pages. Literally everything they do is hateful.)
