The Handmaidens of Hatred

David Prentice

It's unfortunate that this has to be a discussion about hate – unfortunate because hatred is divisive, destructive, and at the very least unpleasant.  It has never been totally gone from us, and now it is in the process of overwhelming an entire side in our political debate.  During times of war between countries, hatred has always had its way to one degree or another.  Many people from the U.S. and other allied countries hated Germany and Japan during WWII.  The converse was true as well.  During the current war against radical Islam, it is clear we are hated, and many of us return that toward the ideas of jihad.  That's not surprising............In the book 1984, there is a scene describing group hatred as mandated by the regime: "A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp."

George Orwell showed the world that hatred is an emotion purposefully used to control people. Besides the daily "two minutes hate," there was an annual "hate week" in the fictional world of 1984. In our very real world, we have witnessed a huge jump in the amount of time for these hate-fests. Since November 8, we have perhaps witnessed the most intense three-month period of hatred in my life – a nonstop drumbeat of negativity toward Trump and his supporters from the entire left..........More