Wednesday, February 20, 2019

And furthermore, to hell with hate

Yesterday we had Tim Hardin. Today, Joe South:

'Cause you've given up your sanity
For your pride and your vanity
Turns your back on humanity
And you don't give a da da da da da

Which brings us back to Chicago and Jussie Smollett. It's becoming increasingly clear that the hate crimes he reported were fabrications of his own. While that's a problem, there's a larger problem -- in our time, certain hatreds are essentially sanctioned. John Hayward, as always, cuts to the chase:
Why wouldn’t other hoaxers expect similar “fake but accurate” defenses when their phony hate crime reports fall apart? They know they will be given virtually limitless credit for good intentions. The worst media action line they have to fear is: “Okay, maybe everyone involved was wrong and we can all learn something from this teachable moment.” With a little luck, they will be able to argue they were forced into faking a hate crime by the terrible climate of fear President Donald Trump has created.

We can take a step toward fixing that by throwing the book at Jussie Smollett if he’s found guilty of faking a hate crime, which absolutely must be considered as much of a hate crime as the incident he faked. Otherwise, we are reinforcing all of the awful forces that inspire people to invent phony hate crimes, including the poisonous totalitarian idea that some groups are incapable of hatred, while others deserve to be hated, so slandering them is not a serious offense.
Emphasis in the original. I don't pretend to understand the demons inside of Jussie Smollett, but based on the available evidence, his pride and vanity led him to turn his back on humanity. Back to South:

They're gonna teach you how to meditate
Read your horoscope, cheat your fate
And further more to hell with hate
Come on and get on board

We give sanction to bad ideas and we're surprised that such sanction leads to bad behavior. Getting on board is more important than thinking. Hate is an incentive right now.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Sooner or later, White Men will strike back.

John said...

"there's a larger problem -- in our time, certain hatreds are essentially sanctioned."

This has struck me as a truism for some time now. Way back in the olden days when Colleges and Universities dealt with teaching the sciences, liberal arts, and engineering we seemed to come away with a rather tolerant nation (granted there was both sanctioned and subtle racism/sexism) but we raised those who knew how to confront the social issues with public protest.

Today, aa colleges focus on social justice and grievance studies we have created a generation that does not understand the intrinsic nature of mankind through history, believing they can alter those natures by their own intolerance.

We see real conflict as theory meets reality and the one side insists a theory is unquestionable.