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The Politics of Hate: How Trump Weaponized Our Darkest Instincts -- Thom Hartmann
https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-politics-of-hate-how-trump-weaponized-7caWhy America must confront the corrosive force that Trump is trying to use to tear us apart...
Yesterday, I spoke with you about the importance of our government embracing free speech and not trying to stifle it or intimidate (or deport) people for unpopular political writings. Today, let’s examine the flip side of that argument: hate speech, the power and danger of hate itself, and how we defeat it as Trump tries to use it to manipulate us.
Hate is poison; it never makes anything better. It’s corrosive like an acid, eats away at our empathy and reason, and eventually destroys our very humanity. When nations are consumed by hate — like Germany was in the 1930s, or the American South was during Jim Crow — the result is invariably the destruction of civil society and its replacement with political, economic, and legal systems based in and dependent upon violence.
Hate killed a state legislator in Minneapolis this past weekend, nearly killed Paul Pelosi with a hammer, and fuels the same violent rage that burned through Charlottesville, stormed the Capitol on January 6th, and has been stalking school board meetings and statehouses across America for the past two decades.
Hate brought Senator Alex Padilla to his knees; does anybody believe that if he’d been white he’d have been dragged out like that and beat to the ground? It inspired Senator Mike Lee and Elon Musk to essentially congratulate a would-be mass murderer. It just arrested the Comptroller of New York City for trying to defend a man seeking asylum in the United States.
Hate blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, took down the twin towers on 9/11, and keeps loading the chambers of mass shooters while whispering lies about enemies and conspiracies until blood spills in schools, synagogues, churches, and supermarkets.
So, why does Trump — and why do his followers, including those elected to federal and state office, and his cabinet members — so vigorously embrace hate?
. . .
Hate is poison; it never makes anything better. It’s corrosive like an acid, eats away at our empathy and reason, and eventually destroys our very humanity. When nations are consumed by hate — like Germany was in the 1930s, or the American South was during Jim Crow — the result is invariably the destruction of civil society and its replacement with political, economic, and legal systems based in and dependent upon violence.
Hate killed a state legislator in Minneapolis this past weekend, nearly killed Paul Pelosi with a hammer, and fuels the same violent rage that burned through Charlottesville, stormed the Capitol on January 6th, and has been stalking school board meetings and statehouses across America for the past two decades.
Hate brought Senator Alex Padilla to his knees; does anybody believe that if he’d been white he’d have been dragged out like that and beat to the ground? It inspired Senator Mike Lee and Elon Musk to essentially congratulate a would-be mass murderer. It just arrested the Comptroller of New York City for trying to defend a man seeking asylum in the United States.
Hate blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, took down the twin towers on 9/11, and keeps loading the chambers of mass shooters while whispering lies about enemies and conspiracies until blood spills in schools, synagogues, churches, and supermarkets.
So, why does Trump — and why do his followers, including those elected to federal and state office, and his cabinet members — so vigorously embrace hate?
. . .