NO HATRED ZONE

[johnpalmer]

This Dreamwidth Journal is a NO HATRED zone.

You want to hate on me, I might allow it, I might not. You hate on someone else, you’re gone.

You can’t be a “Trump supporter” and it’s nearly impossible to be a “Republican,” and be free of hate. Look, if “the Democrats would be worse,” wasn’t irrational, why are we stuck in a Middle Eastern war? Okay, and, when you have irrational, nasty, feelings about people (e.g., “Trump is bad, but DEMONcrats would be worse,”), we call it “hatred.” I mean, only because that’s pretty much what hatred is, is irrational nasty feelings, far out of proportion to any harm done to you.

So if you’re a Republican, I honestly don’t know why you’d give the Republican Party your support. They’ve put judges in places that let Trump hurt people; and they even let Trump start illegal wars, without threatening impeachment and removal. Believe it or not, there was a time when Republicans could turn on a bad Republican. Richard Nixon was about to be impeached, and removed, with Republican support, so he resigned. Trump’s murder on the high seas, to stop cocaine boats headed for Europe; and Trump’s illegal wars, should have had him removed. I know, you might say “but what’s hateful about allowing a President to murder a couple hundred people, or several thousand in Iran?” as if human life meant so little that even one murder on the high seas wasn’t enough to remove the boss of federal law enforcement for high crimes.

I use brutal logic when discussing hate; hate is a disease that requires careful eradication, because it’s so enjoyable to us. We love to dream of an enemy, we love to pour out our venom to an enemy, and it’s hard to think about thousands of Iranians, including schoolchildren, dying thousands of miles away, so it’s easy to just, you know, erase them as unworthy of consideration. “It’s nothing personal,” you might say, as you drop a 2000lb bomb on their head, but, when it’s your corpse, it’s very personal. To think of all these people, as being unworthy of life, so that we should just read about them, and act as if it’s “news” and not “crimes against humanity,” well, that’s a pretty hateful outlook.

Look, I’m sorry, but, y’all confused a lesson. In a war, a soldier kills, and will do so in every manner possible, that is honorable, and proud. The soldier can’t think “this is someone’s dad, son, brother, uncle,” and instead must do a horrible job with very limited compassion. We have to be the soldier’s conscience, and we can’t turn our own consciences off, just because it’s people in uniforms doing the killing. They are the ones who can’t think of the lives of each individual; they are the only ones who have that excuse. The rest of us, we have to keep watch, and make sure they continue to act honorably, and proudly, most emphatically by only placing them in honorable, proud, combat situations, like defending us from real threats, not Trump's imagination. “Accidentally” blowing up a school isn’t honorable, or proud. Honor, and pride, require the military use careful rules of engagement, that sometimes put our troops further into harm's way before fighting back, but it maintains the discipline needed to have a world class fighting force.

So: no loud hate. And no quiet hate, where we discuss “collateral damage” as if it were shoe scuffs, and not people’s lives. ObBeetlejuice: “Th-these aren’t my rules, see. In fact, I don’t have any rules.” But thinking it’s cool to snuff people’s lives out, as if they were a burning cigarette butt, is hateful.

So, no offense, but it’s really hard for me to imagine a good Republican who is free of hate. If you think the party is doing okay, it should have removed Trump already, so, no, it’s really not okay.