Maybe this isn’t the place for this. And I’m sure everyone is sick by now of reading these stories. So, apologies in advance.
I’ve never been comfortable with hate. I’ve only ever truly hated one person in my life. Allright, maybe two. I don’t like how hate feels. And that’s in both directions; hating, and being hated, are both terribly painful. I’ve been fortunate in my life, for the most part, to not be afflicted with hate.
Maybe that’s changing.
I wrote a few months ago about being instantly un-friended on Facebook by a member of a family with whom I’ve been friends for two decades now, for saying (s)he was wrong about the Republican health-care law and putative repeal of the ACA. Please indulge me for a moment as I quote a bit from that piece:
I’ve known for some time that this person (and other members of his/her family) have been marinating their brains in right-wing fan fiction for many years now, but I never once considered un-friending them or ending my relationship with them (although, to be fair, I did hide their feeds so as not to see the propaganda they were propagating; more on that presently). Two of them, so far, have un-friended me, both on occasions when a non-right-wing (or anti-Trump) political view seeped into my feed.
I’ve been trying for years to strike a balance between the love, affection, friendship and respect I have for my friends and acquaintances who happen to be steeped in right-wing politics (see here and here, for example), and the distress I feel when I find that people I love discretely harbor some truly hateful, vicious, horrifying beliefs and attitudes, or are at least willing to disseminate the work of others expressing such. That’s why I hide their feeds rather than un-friend them; my love and affection for them is more important than my discomfort or revulsion at the propaganda...
Well, today, the matriarch of that family — forgive me, I just don’t want to play the pronoun game anymore — a woman whom I have loved, respected, admired, confided in, and so forth, for two decades, decided to very publicly and without warning announce to the world, on Facebook, that she hates me, that I “betrayed” her, and that I am “dead to” her.
Why? Because I’m a secular liberal.
I wish there was more to it than that, I really, truly do, but there really isn’t. I have thoughts and ideas, especially about religion, that differ from hers; thoughts and ideas that she cannot tolerate, and that she certainly cannot tolerate being communicated to or shared with other members of her family.
The screed wasn’t directed only at me. I was one of two people named therein and addressed by name. Long story short, another member of that family has recently broken with the rest, inter alia questioning and rejecting their right-wing political and strict, orthodox religious views, especially the latter. She reached out to me about it a while back, and I was sympathetic. I referred her to some of George Carlin’s bits about religion.
As far as I know, that’s all I did, or said. That’s what I did wrong. That’s the “betrayal.”
So, today, a cherished and valued 20-year friendship came to an abrupt, sudden, very public end. Not in a private conversation, not face-to-face or over the phone, or even by private e-mail or text, but in a public screed on social media directed at me and other individuals who have expressed any sort or degree of solidarity or compassion for someone who no longer shares or accepts the rest of her family’s political and religious orthodoxy.
Obviously there is some drama going on in that family that I’m not privy to; it’s hard to know if I really overstepped my bounds or not. I don’t think I did, and I hope I didn’t, but I don’t hold myself blameless here. When two (or more) people you love are in conflict with each other, it’s hard to walk that tightrope. I know that in sympathizing with the family member’s plight I didn’t badmouth anyone else. But I must have done something wrong.
I haven’t even begun to think about why this person chose a public display of hatred and vindictiveness over a private conversation; why announce to the world that I was “dead to” her instead of calling me up to talk about it, or even just to yell at me? For 20 years there was almost nothing we couldn’t talk about; nothing I couldn’t tell her.
Almost.
Once I recognized what this person’s views and attitudes were about religion and politics, based on the propaganda she shared on that feed I had to hide, I knew I had to avoid those subjects when we talked. I knew that nothing good could come of bringing them up, or engaging in debate, in conversation or on social media. There was, at least from where I sat, way too much hate bubbling under the surface of that right-wing-meme-filled Facebook feed. I loved this person and cherished our friendship, but I didn’t want to find myself on the receiving end of that hatred.
Well, now I’m sitting in its crosshairs.
Maybe it was a mistake to not share or discuss my secular-progressive views or skepticism about religion with her; at the very least, this might have ended mutually, and privately, and been a lot less painful. Maybe it was a mistake to hold onto this relationship; to hide her feed instead of distancing myself further or more completely at that time.
I know what a lot of you are thinking: This is where we are now. And this is where we are: A place where disagreements about politics and religion not only get in the way, they rend people apart like sheets of paper towel; violently, and irrevocably. They destroy friendships, and destroy understanding, and destroy lives, and destroy love.
A lot of love was destroyed today.
It was destroyed because different people have different thoughts and ideas about what this world is really all about. It was destroyed because people can’t, and/or don’t, communicate. It was destroyed because people can’t, and/or don’t, understand each other, or even care to understand each other. It was destroyed because people love their religion, their politics, or both, more than they love each other.
This isn’t about Trump. The destruction of love didn’t start with Trump, and it certainly won’t end with Trump. I don’t hate Trump, I don’t hate my now-former friend and confidante, and I don’t hate religious conservatives, but I do hate that this is the world we’ve created, one that goes out of its collective way to destroy love. I hate the destruction of love; I hate the things that destroy love, that seem to exist now only to destroy love. As I weep for the love that’s been destroyed, so callously, so needlessly, so pointlessly.
I’ll get over this, and move on, in due time. Right now, all I feel is pain, and hate, and hate, and pain. It’s the worst feeling in the world.