Anger or Hate?

Are you angry yet?

Apparently, we are all very, very angry. And we could use some serious anger management skills. Elizabeth Bernstein has explained it in the Wall Street Journal and Elizabeth Chang has done the same in the Washington Post.

I will not summarize their excellent presentations, because I want to deviate from the general idea: first, that we can mitigate national anger with therapy; and second, that what people are feeling is really anger.

In truth, I would say that we are being consumed by hatred more than by anger. When you are angry with someone you attempt to reconcile. When you hate someone, you want to destroy him.

As for why we feel anger or hatred, the reason is simple: we have been told that these feelings are morally correct. If we are not enraged by racism and sexism we are moral eunuchs. If we do not hate those who brought us those evils, we are worse than moral eunuchs.

Group hatred differs significantly from the hatred you feel over the fact that someone stole your bicycle and you cannot get it back.

Since there is only one object of the hatred, President Donald Trump, the notion that those who despise him want to do anything but destroy him is risible. From the beginning of his presidency, Trump’s detractors have had only one object in mind: to destroy him, to destroy his presidency, to destroy all of those who supported him or voted for him.

While inveighing against hate they have been trafficking in hate. At the least, they are not very bright. The same applies to anyone who follows their lead.

It began with the #MeToo movement, organized in the name of the nation’s leading enabler of sexual harassment, organized by people who did not just hate men, but who also hated America and Jews, organized by people who were happy to give Bill Clinton a pass on sexual harassment and rape charges, but refused to do the same for any other white male.

Intellectually incoherent, the anger at white men quickly became hatred-- designed to destroy men, to destroy careers, to destroy families and lives. It did not even solve the problem it intended to solve. Male managers across America learned that they should not mentor young women, should not spend time alone with young women and so on. As for men mistreating women, relations between the sexes outside of the office were hardly suffused with respect and affection. Tinder dates were certainly consensual, but women who imagined that these dates would lead to something more were enraged when their hopes were not fulfilled.

And then American politics were all about hatred of Trump. From the Russian collusion hoax to the impeachment fiasco, it was all about hating Trump. It worked well enough in the 2018 presidential elections, so the media is trotting it out for the 2020 elections. It would be nice to think that our elite intellectuals have suddenly discovered that racism is wrong, but it is probably closer to the truth to say that they are working to gin up Black voter turnout.

Again, the George Floyd protests, led by a crypto-Marxist gang called Black Lives Matter, fully supported by America-hating bigots like Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan, will almost certainly set back the cause of civil rights. As we witness the witless attacks on American business and American institutions, do you feel a grain of respect for the people who are perpetrating these outrages? Do you want to hire them? Do you want to do business with them?

It would be good if someone would ask how it happened that the condition of Black America had improved under the Trump presidency. It would be good if someone would ask why the Obama obsession with social justice had not benefited Black people as much as Trumpian deregulation had.

Of course, no one is asking these questions. The goal, for today, is to destroy, and to pretend that one is destroying racism. In fact those who are leading the protests are working to elect Joe Biden and a Democratic Congress. Nothing more and nothing less.

As of now, they are clearly winning their bet. Of course, when they wake up to find out that they have won, they will also face the fallout from their absurd expressions of hate. They might find that the prize they sought is a poisoned gift. They might discover that with power comes responsibility. And they might discover that the skills required to gin up national hysteria, to give expression to hatred, and to destroy peoples's lives are of little use when it comes time to govern.