Hate

 Lack of Love is Indifference

"paradise is a world where everything / is sanctuary & nothing is a gun."

- Danez Smith, "summer, somewhere"

I looked at postings from the supporters of Donald Trump, and I understand they will never find sanctuary as long as they hold onto hate. Is it hyperbole, sometimes.

At other times, the hate and rage easily lapses into violence.

At a Trump rally in 2022, a Trump supporter explained that in the coming civil war he would murder his Sister, a Democrat, without hesitation. In 2020 there was the incident when a Trump caravan intentionally harassed a Biden/Harris campaign bus. Tailgating with the intent to harass is a crime. Ramming is overt, and involves reckless endangerment.  The January 6th attack on the Capitol demonstrates how easily hate can result in violence. Trump called them patriots.

Going Deeper

Strong emotions can make it impossible to think, reason and make decisions. And the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. Hate is not about indifference. Hate is intense and unremitting and can easily motivate violence. Hate usually stems from fear, insecurity, or mistrust. (MedicineNet)

Hate has a very strong pull. Psychology today provided insight. Aristotle says, “hate rises without previous offense, is remorseless for the person experiencing it, incurable by time, and strives for the annihilation of its target.”

Darwin, in 1872, described hate as a feeling that lacks a distinct facial expression and manifests itself as rage.

Typically, hate is viewed as an extreme form of dislike, an amplified version of anger, disgust, or contempt and a readiness to do harm.

Psychologists believe that hate is most likely to emerge in the presence of moral violations particularly when the targets of hatred are perceived as bad, immoral, and dangerous. It is not surprising, therefore, that politicians frequently vilify their opponents using negative terms.

If you are consumed with hate it will make you crazy and old before your time. (cs&n)

According to the Psych Matters website, It’s important to note that all these reactions affect only the hater, and not the hated, breaking down your nervous – immune – and endocrine system, and your mental well-being.

Manipulated by an algorithm

Letting go of hate takes a realization that you are consumed by hate and a willingness to change. The fires that feed hate and rage on social media are unremitting. Stepping back, taking a breath is hard when all you see and hear reinforces the hatred. It is evil and it could consume all of us.

"Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil." "But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness." "Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly." (Psalm 37)

Let's Get Real

My Grandparents Were Immigrants

They faced the uncertanty of starting over in a strange land,. They did not face the possibility of being dissappeared.

As the American survivors of last week’s bloody kidnapping in Matamoros receive medical treatment, and the bodies of those killed are repatriated, Mexico’s broader epidemic of disappearances remains largely unsolved: More than 100,000 Mexicans and migrants have disappeared, with no explanation of their fate for families. -cnn

Congress, if it wanted to, could fix our part of this problem by passing new immigration laws. When congressmen call on the president to do something, it is a disingenuous call. They hold the power to come up with a fair and just solution. Those who complain the loudest are just looking for political gain, not solutions to the problem. 

If we really are one nation under God, why do we refuse to offer sanctuary to those being oppressed and facing death?

Immigration Reform

 Immigration reform is up to Congress. 

Bipartisan deals on immigration have eluded lawmakers and presidents for three decades. The last big immigration bill was passed in 1986 when Ronald Reagan was president and both houses of Congress were held by Democrats. A smaller bill was passed in 1990 when George H.W. Bush was president and both houses of Congress were still controlled by Democrats. (Brookings)

To blame the president, or fly immigrants to Martha's Vinyard isn't going to change the situation. It is disingenuous and merely political theater.

Would it unreasonable to assume that if we want anything meaningful to happen with immigration reform, the Democrats need to be in control of both houses of Congress? Otherwise we get cynicism, and political posturing that plays off fear and hatred.

Road Rage: Just One Symptom

Road Rage Everywhere!

Road Rage is on the rise. Violent altercations are leading to fatal shootings, and it is happening with increased frequency. It's another symptom of our social ills, and it's the tip of the iceberg.

This just a sampling from various news sources

• After boarding a flight to New York’s LaGuardia Airport, Arielle Jean Jackson got into a heated verbal altercation with a Southwest employee. According to Bloomberg, she was asked to leave. While departing, the confrontation turned physical, and Jackson hit an airline agent. The employee was brought to a hospital after being punched in the head.

• In Vermont, a man menaced a group of election officials, warning them that “your days are f*cking numbered.”

• In Missouri, a public health official was “physically assaulted, called racist slurs, and surrounded by an angry mob.”

• In Oregon, a school board member was told that a neighbor was out looking for him — and threatening to kill him

• Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) shared a video posted to his Twitter and Instagram depicting violence and the apparent killing of the Democratic congresswoman. His party thinks this is ok.

• The former head of Tennessee’s vaccine rollout, Dr. Michelle Fiscus and her husband, have been forced out of their home after facing threats and taunts. 

• School nurses threatened for enforcing COVID protocols. 

• Anti-vaxxers are threatening to burn down schools. 

• In 2020, 279 hate crime incidents against individuals of Asian descent were reported, compared to 158 incidents reported in 2019. More than 60% of hate crimes in the United States were carried out on the basis of an individual's race, according to FBI data released Monday.
• 

We're coming apart at the seams

 There is no civil discourse. We could blame social media, but social media is only the means by which we spread our hate.

It should be no surprise that road rage is on the rise too. It's not just your imagination. There are more shootings and deaths as a result of road rage.

In 2020, 42 people a month on average, were shot and killed or wounded in road rage incidents according to a recent report by Everytown for Gun Safety, a national gun violence prevention organization. That’s nearly double the monthly average for the four years prior.

The group’s report comes from data collected by the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research organization.

If the trend continues, Everytown projects there will be more than 500 deaths or injuries involving road rage incidents with guns in 2021. So far this year, someone has been shot and killed or injured every 18 hours, said Sarah Burd-Sharps, the group’s research director. -Pew Trust

Where to go from here?

We can't control another person's emotions, but we can control our own. We can understand our own triggers and put a lid on them before they get out of hand. We can also attempt to deescalate the situation. I went to the NSW Website to find out more.

This is from NSW Government Health.

When there are signs of anger or verbal aggression it is important to remember that:

• you need to stay calm
• anger may be a sign that the person is in distress, experiencing fear or frustrated
• it is not possible to reason or problem solve with someone who is enraged
• effective communication skills are the key to settling, resolving and de-escalating a situation.

Use the strategies below to de-escalate a situation:

• Listen to what the issue is and the person's concerns.
• Offer reflective comments to show that you have heard what their concerns are.
• Wait until the person has released their frustration and explained how they are feeling.
• Look and maintain appropriate eye contact to connect with the person.
• Incline your head slightly, to show you are listening and give you a non-threating posture.
• Nod to confirm that you are listening and have understood.
• Express empathy to show you have understood.

It is not possible to stop another person being angry, but these steps may help to make the person feel calmer. Something more constructive begins then.

Conspiracies and Friends

Confronting Truth

Recently I had a friend write to me lamenting the loss of friendship over politics and conspiracies. There was a time when friends could disagree over politics and still be friends, and still have respect for each other. For some, that has become impossible. My friend wrote that their Trumpian politics caused a divide that had become a chasm. He's mourning the loss.

I wrote him this response:

I've found the only thing I can really do when I get into a conversation with a conspiracy theorist is listen. I'm still firm on my points, but confronting them with the facts won't change much. They need to reach a point of critical thinking on their own. For some, reaching that point may be too late. Think about how COVID is decimating the unvaccinated. The realization comes in the moments before death.

80 million eligible persons remain unvaccinated because of deliberate misinformation. The rate of infection is now the highest it has ever been. These are people who believe there are alternative facts.

Booker T. Washington had an understanding of the sad truth behind populism.

  

"A lie doesn't become truth, wrong doesn't become right, and evil doesn't become good, just because it's accepted by a majority.”

Our friends from Ripon have no excuse. Our experience at a liberal arts college was supposed to make us critical thinkers. Did they waste that opportunity? Now, their views have broader implications because they're putting all of us at risk.

Your COVID politics can be lethal

So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. - Ephesians 4:25

 It Makes No Sense

We have a raging pandemic. Now is the time to put political differences aside for the health and well-being of everyone. But not if you've sipped the Kool-Aid of Trump's Republican Party. Loyalty to the Trump line is of paramount importance to these people. And...The needs of the individual trump all needs, even if such assertions are against their best interests. 

I didn't have to go back too far to find precedent for the desire to die of COVID for a political cause.

One of the key takeaways from the 2016 election was the frustration of a widening group of lower middle income white Americans. Trump's message was particularly appealing to this group. There is a growing unease as the middle class is excluded as more wealth is concentrated in the upper caste. The stress is having a negative effect. Life span expectancy has dropped two years for white males.

In the book Caste, written by Isabel Wilkerson, asserts the widening gap is causing an increasing group of disaffected Americans. 

From the book: 

"Exclusion cost lives, up and down the hierarchy. The physician Jonathan M. Metzel, who has conducted research into the health of disaffected whites in middle America, has measured the life and death consequences of state decisions to withhold benefits seen as helping undeserving minority groups. In the state of Tennessee he found restrictive health policies may haver cost the lives of almost 4,600 African-Americans between 2011 and 2015, but also cost the lives of as many as 12,000 white Tennesseans, more than double the loss sustained by black residents."

"In his book, Dying of Whiteness, Metzel told of the case of a forty-one-year-old white taxi driver who was suffering from an inflamed liver. His life obviously threatened. Because the Tennessee legislature had neither taken up the Affordable Care Act nor expanded Medicaid coverage, the man was unable to get the expensive, lifesaving treatment that would have been available to him had he lived across the border in Kentucky. As he approached death, he stood by the conviction that he did not want the government involved."

"No way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens, he told Metzel." Ain't no way I would ever support Obamacare or sign up for it. I would rather die."

"And sadly, so he would." 

We see the same sad consequences playing out in red states today. Refusal to wear mask, refusal to keep social distancing, and refusal to get the vaccine. The Delta Variant is making the unvaccinated very ill. Yet, so many are sticking by their decision to refuse being vaccinated. A decision reinforced by misinformation fired by social media posts and conservative 'news' outlets. The argument might be something like, "If they make us take the vaccine, they'll be coming for our guns next!" 

Even Mitch McConnell is alarmed. He urging his constituencies to get the vaccine or risk shutting everything down again. Missing from this quote is mention of needless suffering , and needless death. I don't think they're listening.

The nation as it is currently constituted has never dealt with a yesterday or tomorrow where we were radically honest, generous, and tender with each other. - Kiese Laymon, Heavy (2018)

COVID Testing and Politics

 

Partisan Politics May Be Killing Us

There are three main reasons why we don't have easily accessible rapid testing.  

The first is out of abundant caution. The second and third have nothing to do with caution. They are about ideology. That ideology is putting all of us at risk.  Of course, the Trump administration is focused on overturning a free and fair election, instead of the health and well-being of Americans.

Why isn’t the U.S. doing more testing? There are three reasons.

1. The F.D.A. has been slow to grant approval for new tests. 
2. The Trump administration has been slow to spend the money that Congress has allocated for testing. 
3. And Congress may need to allocate more money; mass testing could cost a few billion dollars a month — still a small fraction of the cost of recent proposed virus bills.

-NYTimes

Three Observations

1. The Trump administration is focused on subverting a free and fair election, instead of the health and well-being of Americans.
2. Conservatives are more concerned about the bottom line than people's lives. 
3. A Little leadership would be nice. Set the ideology aside and do what is best.

Follow the Science

Testing will remain important going forward, Yes, we are on the verge of several vaccines, but we are months away from getting anything close to full coverage.

Dr. Fauci has spoken several times about the importance of testing. 

Importance of testing: 

Testing is the first step for contact tracing -- a tried and true public health approach that involves identifying cases quickly, isolating and treating those people, identifying their contacts and testing them to see if they need to be isolated or quarantined.

“But deep down perhaps I should have been much more vocal about saying we have really, absolutely, got to do that,’” Fauci said. “I saw that it went nowhere and maybe I should have kept pushing the envelope on that.”

Testing is important because otherwise cases spread silently, Fauci noted. “What is going on now that you don’t recognize becomes a case a few weeks later,” he said.

“That becomes a hospitalization a few weeks later. That becomes intensive care a few days later. That becomes death a few weeks later.”

Fauci said he was hesitant to talk about his regrets for fear his statements would be taken out of context as sound-bites. - Associated Press

There were over 218,000 new cases in the US on December 9th, and over 3,000 deaths according to Johns Hopkins University, 

Public Radio Should Tackle the Issues

Sometimes, when politicians get beyond their rehearsed remarks, they reveal themselves.

A Connecticut Congressional candidate Mark Greenberg revealed his bias in a careless remark about Islam on WNPR's Where We Live. He said in an interview on WNPR's Where we live that he found Islam to be objectionable. He questioned whether Islam was a religion of peace like Christianity and and Judaism. He said, "We have to be able to be real about the fact that some folks in that religion are out to kill us." Then Greenberg dug himself in deeper by calling Islam a cult. Greenberg later backed off his comments which were condemned by his Republican opponents. 


In his comments Greenberg revealed his feelings and his bias. The public needs to know where the candidates are coming from. In this case, public radio played an important role in that process. At times, people in development roles and senior management winced when we took on our role as journalist. They were concerned being button holed and with the bottom line. Serious journalism doesn't always make for smooth sailing. 


There are more reactions to Greenberg's comments in The Hartford Courant, The Waterbury Republican, The Torrington Register and The Huffington Post. Given the reaction and coverage given to the interview, could this story be considered impactful?


You can hear the entire interview on WNPR's Website.