Back and Forth Hatred

Some people see the world like it’s all sports teams.  You don’t have to have a real reason for hating another group, it’s enough to know that you’re on different sides.  That kind of thing flies when you’re in high school, but not enough people drop it when they become adults.  I mean, this is hatred here, not friendly rivalry.  People are actually getting hurt, but some people only care about the ones on their own side.  Everything is Hatfields and McCoys.  So many feuds go back so far that no one cares who threw the first punch. 

We are constantly at war with various middle eastern countries.  Sometimes their citizens only know what their government tells them.  All they know about America is that we keep sending airplanes to bomb their schools.  No matter what our intentions, there is no reason in the world they should think of America as the good guys.  Their kids grow up, they hate America, they fight back.  We still call them the bad guys, even though we’re the ones who killed their parents.  It is a war fought out of ignorance.  I’m not even saying we should stop – we have to defend ourselves, right?  But we do need to step back and examine they psychology of it sometimes.  Figure out if there are any other possible solutions besides sending in more bombers.  Find ways to win over the populace, so they overthrow their own evil government, or arrest their own terrorists.

The fact is, there are bad people on both sides of every issue.  You shouldn’t judge an entire group for that.  But also, in every fight there are people who are second/third/fourth/etc generation fighters, people who don’t remember when the first punch was thrown, and only know that the other side has always been mean to them.

A white child might not know that his father started a feud by burning a cross on their neighbor's lawn.  He just knows that the black kids next door won’t play with him, so he gets the wrong impression and grows up to be a second-generation racist.  But are we really going to blame the neighbors for being afraid of letting the kids play together?

A friend once told me he didn't like gay people.  One of his reasons was that once saw some GLBT people at a protest, and they were acting angry.  He said the protestors were so hateful, and shouting so many mean things, that he was convinced they were a hate group.  I wasn’t there, but my feeling is that if they were so hateful, it’s probably because they’ve been stomped on by society.  When all you see is the response, without seeing the what caused it, you get the impression that the defenders are the aggressors.

I follow Gail Simone on Twitter.  She's one of the best comic book writers in the business, and also an outspoken feminist.  A lot of sexist male readers dislike her.  Gail is happy to humor them, and often openly debates them on Twitter.  She uses logic and class, and her arguments are sound.

But if people are rude to her, she has no problem calling them out on it.  If you act like an asshole, she will say so, in so many words.  If she is weary from debating all day and wants to focus on positive posts, she will mute the jerks for the night, so as not to distract from the new topics.  Remember, this is not her job.  She uses Twitter for fun, and she has no obligation to engage jerks at all.

Meanwhile, the jerks will post on their own Twitter pages examples of Gail calling them an asshole, or muting them, without any of the context that led up to it.  They call her unprofessional, even though she just spent an entire day debating with idiots in the most professional way possible.  Because she won't consent to be insulted by idiots 24/7, she gets branded the rude one.

I see the same thing in every debate out there.  There are enough hateful people on both sides of every debate, that either side can cherry pick their opponents' responses and pick out rude ones.  Conservatives are literally killing people with their policies, but they have no problem finding examples of bad Liberals and saying, "Look how evil our opponents are!"  Because no side is perfect.

To me, Republicans are obviously in the wrong lately.  They are doing everything possible to make sure only rich white males have the most freedom.  From my point of view, it is the party of hatred.  And yet, it's my Republican friends who keep posting memes that say, "Why is everybody so mean, can't we all get along?"  I could easily post a long ranty thread about how it's a sign of privilege to wonder why people won't stop fighting, but for now I'll just say this: Republicans don't have to fight because they already won.  To those who are in power, any challenge to that power looks like hatred.  Even if that "hatred" is just underprivileged people fighting for their rights.

I’m not going to tone police you.  I’m not going to say, “You should only protest this way.”  All I’m saying is that when you act as hateful as the people you’re protesting against, it doesn’t change minds.  It just gives the other side more ammo.  That is an unfortunate fact, but it doesn't mean you should stop fighting.

More importantly, just because you see an example of a stupid/evil/rude person in a group, it doesn't mean that side is wrong.