So I just came up with this theory that Americans, more than the people of any other country, just fricking hate each other.

Like, even the people we're closest to. We all hate each other, and we think of that as normal and funny. Our sitcoms are full of it -- friends who hate each other, married couples who hate each other, parents who hate their children, children who hate their parents --

Co-workers who hate each other, neighbors who hate each other, fans of competing sports teams who hate each other, people on public transit at the same time who hate each other, anything that causes two or more people to interact, Americans hate each other.

Americans have really normalized this idea that OF COURSE everybody hates and resents everybody else, and it becomes a feedback loop --

Where we excuse entitled asshole behavior in ourselves, because everybody else is a BIGGER asshole, right, so that makes everybody else dig in on being an asshole, so we dig in too, etc., unto the asshole singularity.

Americans have normalized this deeply baked-in toxicity to the point where we just take it as a given that everybody is an asshole and we hate them.

So of course we don't want to invest in the public good in even the tiniest way, because we hate those guys, why should they get anything good?

I think this was the thing DJT recognized, as a politician, that Americans just fricking hate each other, and they're sick of pretending they don't.

But non-Magas do it too. I mean, right here in Seattle, a "blue" city in a "blue" state, people are STILL always voting to defund public transit & public housing, wanting to punish the homeless, digging in on the NIMBY attitude.

You see it EVERYWHERE. Fan communities, religious communities, political movements -- we're driven by our hatred for each other far more than our love for anything.

Want to show you "love" God? Do it by hating LGBTQ people!
Want to show you "love" your country? Do it by hating Muslims, Democrats, Communists.
Want to show you "love" the work of a particular artist? Do it by hating everybody who doesn't share your opinion, especially women.

If my big 2016 political revelation was how deeply America hates women, my big 2020 revelation is how deeply America hates America.

Yep, that's where I was going with this. https://twitter.com/owl_momma/status/1235946884780290049

We're driven by hatred for everyone else, but also hatred for ourselves. This is why Magas are happy with DJT policies that hurt them, or why even non-Magas aren't MORE motivated to push for progressive reforms.

Like, we're told we can't have things like Medicare for All or free college because we can't afford it, and we accept that because deep down we don't think any of those jerks DESERVES it and that includes ourselves. We are jerks who don't deserve it.

But "we can't afford it" is a BULLSHIT reason not to do something, here in America, where the worst president ever can run the deficit into the TRILLIONS with a stroke of his pen, putting most of that money into the pockets of the wealthy & accomplishing nothing much.

As a country, we can afford anything we damn well DECIDE to afford.

And I think the fact that we hate each other (and ourselves) and don't trust each other leads to this terrible fear -- that everything is a trap and a lie, that we SAY "Medicare for all" but we MEAN "Good health care only for OTHER people."

I think this FEAR is behind a lot of Biden's support. People aren't afraid of him, because they see him as a known quantity. Maybe we won't get NEW good stuff, like Medicare for all, but at least he's not actively out to get us like DJT is.

People are afraid that the progressive reforms Bernie promises are a trap -- on the right, they see a trap leading us into "communism," but on the left, especially older people, see a trap where we reach for the stars and fall on our faces.

I've mentioned this before, way back when Hillary Clinton was first lady and trying to reform US health care, my more-or-less-Boomer mom was against it, because she was afraid it would hurt her own health care.

I tried to explain that all three of her children lacked health insurance of any kind, so it would benefit US, didn't she care about us? And it's not that she didn't, exactly, but -- that fear.

The last time I tried to convince my mom to support Elizabeth Warren, she was a Mayor Pete supporter, & didn't like Warren or Sanders because she was afraid of Medicare for all, what it would mean to HER.

And my mom is kind of a narcissist, yeah, but I think Americans are encultured to BE narcissists, which, again, is how they could support DJT, because we've normalized narcissism the same way we've normalized hating each other.

She's not malicious like he is, but --

That fear.

If we want Bernie to win the nomination, and win in November, and take the Senate, and keep the House, and usher in a new era of progressive reforms, we have to address that core of hatred and fear that motivates US voters.

Addendum: because I feel the need to keep my philosophies at least somewhat coherent, I wanted to contrast my insistence that it's virtuous to hate DJT specifically, with my assertion that it is bad to hate other Americans generically. https://twitter.com/mcjulie/status/1201882885353066497

There's a deliberately slippery argument where you can see that Americans hating each other is bad, say "hatred is bad" then that gets used in a cynical fashion to chide people for hating the powerful and the corrupt.

You could call it the paradox of hate, similar to the paradox of tolerance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Another addendum: on the topic of interpersonal relations, does compassion and not-hatred of other people require "niceness"? I argue, no.
https://www.gothhouse.org/blog/nicer/