Is Hate the New Normal?

I never cease to be amazed at what has happened in my lifetime. I don’t mean technology - I can barely keep up with this computer and have never learned to text. I guess I just don’t see the point to it.

I thought back when I was at Michigan State, from 1959-1963 that we could change the world, that we could rid this country of hatred and injustice. Hah, was I wrong. 

In the 50 years since I published a counter-culture newsletter, printed on mimeograph paper, pumped out on the dormitory mimeograph machine - remember those when you got blue ink all over you and had to keep turning the crank for the lighter and lighter copies to come out. 

Anyway, I decided that different rules for men and women at MSU were just wrong, so wrote about that every 2 weeks.  I also thought that classes in engineering should not be limited to just men.  That women were supposed to become either teachers, nurses, secretaries or maybe social workers, if you were lucky. I wanted to be an engineer, but my fragile 17 yo ego could not take the bullying handed out by the boys and the professor in the engineering classes, so I quit after 3 days. And I wrote about those things.  

Women had to wear skirts on campus. Remember, this was Michigan where winter temperatures could be below zero for days in a row and we had a long ways to walk from class to class, building to building. 

All of those rules changed the year after I left school. I don’t know if I had anything to do with or not, but with thousands of us feeling the same way, the school bowed to the pressure.

For years, I campaigned for social justice, for civil rights for all.  I was an activist, for sure.

And here I am 50ish years later. I see half the country liking the most racist, bigoted, stupid and hateful politicians I have ever seen.  I am thinking this country has not changed. In fact, it could be worse. I know we gays have a few more rights than we had 50 years ago. In fact lots more.  But we are still assaulted and murdered because of what we are.  

My black friends and relatives are still arrested for driving while black or shopping while black.  Black teens are being murdered by policemen who seem to enjoy it and are not prosecuted. 

Transgendered people are murdered daily and no one really cares.

And now we have bullies for politicians.  Can  you imagine anyone like Donald Trump with his narcissistic personality disorder actually being the president of this country? Or Ben Carson, who represents the most horrific of people with his ‘misremembered’ background and just hates gays, period? Or even Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, with immigrant backgrounds themselves, but spewing hatred against people who wish the same for themselves and their families? And we won’t even mention the last Bush brother, poor thing, or the woman, Fiorina, who disgraces all women.

These folks are whipping the bigots of this country into a hating frenzy, reminiscent of Hitler. And we know where that got us.

And then a couple days ago, a white, Christian terrorist shot and murdered people at a Planned Parenthood Clinic in Colorado Springs. And not one of the Republican candidates said one word about it.  

And the shooter was captured alive. Did anyone notice?  That would not have happened if he were a black teen. 

Please people, we are not this way. We don’t hate. Do we?