About Hate

Hate and its putrid offspring…

As I write this, I have in the back of my mind how easily disrupted the delicate fabric of society can be. I look at America and the rupture that has occurred between who by all logic should be close allies. Disenfranchised people of all colours, ethnicities and social standing. By all rights they should be united and standing against the dismemberment of their stake in their country by the very few who are now ascendant and almost omnipotent.

This is not an anti-Trump rant. It so easily could be but it's not and that's because that is exactly the reaction they want. I'm a progressive in my thinking and it is the Trumpian mission in life to drive the wedge between "his”people and the likes of me. In fact, it is such a mission that they will indulge in behaviour that defies any and the only goal is to own the libs which means getting us in a state where we respond with the same level of mindless, hate-fuelled rhetoric and actions.

Hating Trump is a win for Trump. If we loved him, there would be nothing to inflame the passions of those who defend him so staunchly. The name of the game is to divide and conquer. The most powerful tool in the armory is to eliminate any shared knowledge or understanding of what is true and what isn't. Once people swallow the notion that there is nothing called objective truth any more, facts can be created out of whole cloth.

As economies teeter, more people become desperate and disenfranchised and want some simple answers. A Trump will always provide the simple answer. It's black people, it's immigrants, it's white liberals. As long as they can be portrayed as other, job done. This is serious stuff. Communication breaks down at the fundamental level of family and that introduces a level of toxicity that is almost impossible to eliminate.

The real job of people who don't want to see society destroyed is to stand firm and demonstrate the values of civility, honesty, compassion and humanity that are the lifeblood of a civilised society. Lashing out and behaving like Trump people is doing his work for him.

More fertile ground can be found by progressive/liberal people by understanding the plight of the disenfranchised and doing something about it. If there is racial injustice, work to reduce and eliminate it. If there is hunger and homelessness, support policies and people who have ideas to resolve those things.

In any society, there are only three operating states. There is that in which the balance is wrong and too many people don't have enough. This, pushed too far, has the effect of stirring protest and ultimately conflict of a much more serious nature. There is that in which a balance is struck and a content working class is relatively happy with their lot and knows that aspirations for better are achievable. There is a thriving middle class that powers economy and cultural life and there is a wealthy class who reap the fruits of entrepreneurship and good investment. There is that in which the wealthy find new and ingenious ways to gather an ever increasing share of the wealth, the middle class becomes increasingly worried and diminished and the working class become disconnected from society because they don't have the wherewithal to participate.

This is the world we are in now and it is ripe for exploitation by people of less than noble heart. Wherever you sit on this scale, Trump wants you to hate the other. Divided you are so much less.

I want to inhabit a world where we value every single one of us. Where children enter the world and are immediately seen as valuable members of the community. Parents are respected as being special, doing a special job. The rest of us would feel a happy obligation to support parents with direct and practical help in our own circles and by ensuring there are thoughtful government services to help ensure we produce quality citizens who know where and how they belong.

Everyone would have somewhere warm and dry to sleep and if they need special support, they receive it without stigma. Does all this sound a bit flaky and eutopian? Maybe it does, but we had better be thinking about what we want our own societies to look like. Be assured, there are plenty of Trumps, Bolsnaros, Bashir Al Asad, Mohammed Bin Salman who have a world view that looks pretty scary to people of character.

How do we fight the neo-fascists shooting up mosques, the white nationalists taking up political power positions, the racial genocide, the marginalisation of minorities everywhere?

Engage deeply with your own morals and beliefs and be willing to stand for them. Don't let it slip by when you see someone being offensive to someone else. If it's not ok, say so.

We are only at the beginning of it in NZ right now, but there is culture war on the horizon and those of us who defend the NZ of old, fair, egalitarian, generous, tolerant and unflappable had better start thinking about how we defend those very precious qualities.

What am I doing about it? When I hear rascism, I call it out. When I see sexism, I call that out too. When I hear imported and unexplored doctrine and conspiracy, I fight it with facts as best I can. We have a mighty society to defend here and we should be very clear eyed about how easily it can be taken from us.

Be kind, be fair, be honest, be clear and proud about egalitarian values and don't step over the rotten, putrid puddles of ugliness and discontent that are everywhere.

New Zealand - 100% pure. We aren't yet, but imagine if we could and how satisfying would be that journey?