Hate is a great motivator, and it drives right wing politics--obviously. From "all Muslims might be terrorists" to only "sluts" use birth control, politicians worldwide are using it to obfuscate economic rape by their monied supporters. What got me so pissed is that clerics are enjoying the ride--and then I realized, they probably created group hatred. Before religion, there probably were territorial turf wars--not personal--just one group wanting what the other group had--and, to me, that's normal. Go to the beach, the 2 year old goes to another family's blanket and picks up a toy--ownership is unknown to him--and he wants the toy. That same 2 year old is blind to racial or religious differences--that, too, is normal.
Hate is unavoidable --be it asparagus, odors, dental visits, or sports teams--it is normal to want to avoid certain things. "Leaders" try to direct our tastes in directions for their advantage--either for power or money. The best example of the resultant destruction of such acts can be found in Ireland. Homogenous people turned against each other because a distant king wanted to change the religious rules of marriage and divorce.
Slavery has always been despicable, and American slavery was the most virulent. African families were taken far from their homeland, sold off without regard to sibling or parental or marital status, and treated as animals. Even the Old Testament disavows such treatment and has Jubilee years. To accommodate their actions, slaveholders deemed the African to be less than human--yet converted them to Christianity--strange that. The African wasn't hated while performing his duties, but was feared if he got "uppity." In this case, hate was created to justify the White man's barbarism.
Once religions spread out of small communities, schisms developed, and it became common for clerics to damn those congregants of similar, but, differently titled denominations. Hatred in the name of God seems to make sense--killing became righteous. Somehow, an all loving supernatural being would only be pleased if all humans used the same dialect in His praise. WTF.
Today we're seeing the reemergence of gender hatred--man telling women they are sluts if they have sex with men! Aren't the men more likely the perpetrators of such liaisons-- after all, they usually are bigger and stronger? What truly riles me is that there are women who buy into this shit--just like there were Africans who believed they were inferior 200 years ago. Self hate and self deprecation are the defense mechanisms used by humans that see no other way out--and, for some, that might be true. There are repressive men--and institutions-- that surely are deserving of fear.
I guess what pisses me off the most is that the US is again becoming a country where fear is well founded, where politicians/business/clerics leaders use hate to rule and ruin lives--all the while using a Supreme Being as their shield. Hitler was not an aberration, neither was Idi Amin. And now we see that the worst of George Wallace and Bobby Riggs live on. Ghandi was unique, he got better as he got more influential--not seeing that here and now.