Hate Works Until It Doesn’t

Michelle Obama, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders incite violence.

The only difference between their respective deliveries is that Trump is overt while and Obama and Sanders are covert. If not exactly covert, then let’s just say that the First Lady and Senator Sanders are more nuanced than Mr. Trump.

The examples of Donald Trump inciting violence are fairly easy to identify. When, for example, he speaks at a campaign stop to thousands of people and encourages them to “beat the s — t out of” a protestor…it’s a pretty clear cut case of inciting violence. He has repeatedly taken heat from the media and his opponents for statements such as those as he spews forth variations of them fairly frequently and without abandon. You cannot encourage someone else to be blatantly violent, commit an assault and battery, then disavow that you incited it.

Less overt, but as damaging, is the approach used by Bernie Sanders and Michelle Obama. They prefer conveying ideas, both truthful and deceitful, that are known triggers which carry strong emotional charges for certain people or groups. This approach is more psychologically subtle but no less violent in its outcome.

Today, Mrs. Obama spoke at City College in New York. In this speech she said the following: “It’s the story that I witness every single day when I wake up in a house that was built by slaves. And I watch my daughters, two beautiful black young women, head off to school, waving goodbye to their father, the president of the United States; the son of a man from Kenya who came here to America for the same reasons as many of you: to get an education and improve his prospects in life.”

Mrs. Obama lives an extraordinary luxurious life. Some would say to excess. Yet she never misses an opportunity to pour salt in a national wound well on its way to being healed prior to her husband’s Presidency. She invokes slavery as the root (no pun intended) cause of her personal suffering in having to live in the White House. (As for her husband’s father, well, there’s a much broader and more damning picture of the man than she selectively chose to give).

Apart from the division and anger her “White House built by slaves” reference causes, it’s also not quite true. The White House main residence, as well as foundations of the house, were built largely by enslaved and free African-American laborers, as well as employed Europeans. Much of the other work on the house was performed by immigrants, many not yet with citizenship. [Emphasis added].

The first Lady’s selective knowledge (available to anyone on Wikipedia) serves her agenda, which is to continue to bear the resentment she feels towards her country…and to make certain she keeps that resentment alive in others.

Bernie Sanders is a lifelong theoretical Socialist (leaning heavily towards Communist) who in hypocritical fashion lives quite the capitalist life. When inciting his followers, his ideas are expressed within a context of one who sees the Unites States, and those who treasure its uniqueness, as blight upon the world and the major contributor to its suffering. And while Sanders accuses Trump of “literally inciting violence among his supporters” Sanders himself has no qualms in his speeches about turning all those who support capitalism and free markets into boogeymen who his mostly young and idealistic followers then feel justified in railing against and beating up…as they did yesterday outside the Trump event in San Jose.

Like the sins of omission and commission in Catholicism, there are direct and less direct ways to spread hatred and incite violence. Donald Trump’s style may be the most easily identifiable but it is by no means the only game in town.

This is not a pitch for Hillary Clinton. She participates in a different kind of evil. It’s just that in this season of inciting hatred, she’s an amateur by comparison…hardly worth a mention here.

The real harm, whether the incitement is overt or covert, is to the nation in ways as yet beyond the grasp of most people motivated by the divisive and hateful rhetoric. The real harm is that the turning upon one another starts slowly, and in isolated venues, but it will end with neighbor against neighbor. It will end with us cannibalizing ourselves at the altar of hate and all for the benefit of the very few who seek riches by any means, control at any price and power by way of brutality.

The caution is very old. In Mark 3:25 it says, “And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”

There are people in both parties who know the power of that caution and they are using it against you to advance their own agenda. Your well being is of no concern to them. They are selfish, self-absorbed, egotistical people lusting for power. Some wear custom-made $5000 suits; some were ties stained with their last meal and some wear couture dresses. So long as you continue to think there is a difference between them is how long you will allow their agenda to divide you from your fellow citizens, people you have more in common with than not, and to feel baseless hatred of them for no real reason.