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?

Filled with Hate

I am getting sick and tired of all the hate filled bigots in this world screaming their hatred  to the world.  "They" break natural laws, they say.  "They" are sinners- are going to hell.  "They" are evil and corrupt- or "They"  are dooming civilization. Who knew "They"  had such power!

And speaking of natural laws and the breaking thereof.  Who first started owning land instead of sharing it with other living creatures? Who committed genocide? From Native Americans in the US to the Spanish Inquisition to the holocaust to Darfur. Will it stop? I doubt it.  Seems like that violates natural law to me. Many more violations than loving someone.

Who first started building processing plants so we could eat our fellow citizens while keeping them captive under conditions that give new meaning to the word torture.  Animals are part of our natural world and we torture and kill them so people can make money. In the process, we ruin our lands, poison our air and water.  More violations of natural laws.

Who started paving the land to make streets, bridges, houses, shopping center and stealing land from the people who lived there before us? Now we shoot the creatures that we feel are intruding on our land and often we shoot them just for sport.  And feel that we must shoot to protect that bit of paving that supposedly belongs to us.  Seems like violating natural laws to me.

Who started organized religion and still subscribes to its hate-filled teachings. Now that's breaking natural law. Of course, they collect your money to assure your entrance to a nonexistent afterlife.  This ensures their leaders a money filled present life and they break all natural laws.

And who started making vehicles of war? Vehicles like guns and tanks and bombs so we can claim the land of others.  Killings and dyings considered necessary casualties.  Natural law?  I hardly think so.

People who defend gun ownership, war machinery, farms that offer dead animals for sale, pave land with concrete and poison.  They break natural laws.

And all of us who are hated homosexuals, that supposedly have the power to cause hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and probably even football team losses want to do is love someone without hearing hated being spewed.  “They” is us.

Outrage

No, I am not bitching about doors that don't open or steps that can't be climbed today.  I am stunned and outraged that yet another mass murder has taken place in our country. With a gun.  And the answers from some people is lets everybody get more guns.  If I hear that "guns don't kill people, people do," I am going to kick the speaker in the balls.  People with guns kill people. People without guns do not kill people. At least not with guns. What is it with men/boy children and guns? And killing.

And we as a country don't seem to care. We encourage more and more guns, more killing.  If anything else was a weapon that killed, we would have outlawed it years ago.  It only took 7 deaths from Tylenol before it was pulled from the shelves.

Look around you people. Look at other countries.  8 murders a year, 12 murders a year....We have 32,000 murders a year and have had for decades.

And no one gives a damn.