Hate

It’s Complicated…

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

Assuming you haven’t been living somewhere off the grid and blissfully disconnected from the world at large until this very moment, you’ve been hearing a lot of heavy-handed talk from certain sectors that anyone who doesn’t wholeheartedly embrace and endorse the Trump Administration is un-American. Those targeted with these rhetorical condemnations include Conservatives and several former Republican politicians who display what constitutes an unacceptable degree of disloyalty. It’s the mind-boggling perspective from these circles that, if someone isn’t fully on board with Donald Trump’s rather Autocratic and Authoritarian vision for America, they must hate America.

It’s readily apparent that this is in no way a condition tied to the office of President, but something exclusive to the person of Trump and those who curry his favor (only while they remain in his good graces). That much is evident in how these same people displayed open contempt toward Barack Obama and Joe Biden while they were in the White House. The same pervasive, inimical rhetoric wasn’t directed at the people who opposed Obama and Biden. The vehement opposition to those two Presidents was treated as part of the standard discourse in American politics, despite the acrimony and animosity being far more intense than anything that had previously been considered normal. This double standard indicates to me that there is a whole swath of the American population that believes that the spirit and character of America is somehow embodied within Donald Trump.

The implicit assertion, then, if taken at face value, is that these people believe opposition to Trump’s Administration is symptomatic of hating America (because Trump IS America).

I don’t believe this assertion is accurate, and not solely because it lacks nuance and reeks of little more than partisan jingoistic propaganda. Hating Donald Trump, his policies, and those who work to enact them is neither unpatriotic nor indicative of hating America. On the contrary, I would contest that it’s the people leveling these accusations who actually hate America, or at least the real America that exists outside of Donald Trump’s exceedingly narrow worldview. To defend that argument, I need to explore what it means to hate America. But first, there’s an important question to answer.

What is America?

Is America the land contained within the illusory boundaries we have in place? Is America the people residing in the United States, or (as some would surely insist) just the citizens of the nation? Is it the form of government established by the Constitution? Is it some ideal or another intangible thing beyond the scope of the Constitution, like what we refer to when talking of the American Dream? Is it all of these things, a combination of one or two, or some other thing entirely?

Additionally, we should probably establish what we mean when we say that someone hates America. Is it sufficient that they hate aspects of American culture or history? What about hating substantial portions of the American citizenry? What constitutes hate in this context? Before we can discuss whether one group or another hates America, it would be helpful to define all of our terms.

This, of course, exposes the complicated nature of the topic and further reveals the lack of nuance implicit in the accusations bandied about; that so many people hate America. Before we dig too deep, and speaking solely for myself, I have to say that, where my feelings toward America are concerned, it’s most certainly complicated. If America and I had a relationship status, that would be the simplest box to check: “It’s Complicated.”

Part of the reason for that complicated relationship in my case is that I am one of the millions of people directly descended from one of the 56 men who signed the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Benjamin Rush was a signatory from Pennsylvania, and his descendant, Rosanna Rush Merrill (a nurse during the Civil War), was my great-great-grandmother.

I learned of this family history at a young age. I spent time studying the physician who went from being one of the Sons of Liberty to a member of the Continental Congress, before becoming one of the illustrious men who inscribed his signature on the Founding Document of this nation. Despite the inherent Imperialism and Colonialism implicit in the foundation of America, I took no small amount of pride in knowing that I was directly descended from this man. This was especially true when I was young and ill-informed enough to perceive the country through rose-colored glasses.

I’ve said in the past that, if I had to pick a Founding Father to have descended from, I very well may have selected Benjamin Rush. Of the Founding Fathers I’ve studied, he’s the one who displayed what I consider the most admirable qualities. He was, first of all, an adamant and vocal abolitionist who fully opposed the slave trade and disagreed with any assertion that Black persons were in any way morally or intellectually inferior to Whites. Beyond that, he opposed Capital Punishment, founded both Dickinson College and the Young Ladies’ Academy of Philadelphia, believed in compassionate treatment of the mentally ill, and he believed addiction wasn’t a moral failing.

Sure, he had plenty of ass-backward thoughts on bloodletting and other things (even for the times). And yet, for the times in which he was living, he was nonetheless highly progressive, and I have to say it seems like he left behind more good than bad. It’s difficult not to feel a bit of pride in knowing I had an ancestor of no small esteem, who very well may have also seen the world the same way I do, were he alive today.

Another thing that complicates my relationship with America is that I come from a military family. It’s not just that my ancestor was directly involved in the Revolutionary War or that at least one of my great-great-grandfathers fought (on the correct side) in the Civil War. Both of my grandfathers served during World War II. Two of my three uncles served with the Army in Vietnam. My father was in the Navy, and my subsequent stepfather was in the Air Force. And now my oldest son is in the Army. In fact, had I not fractured five vertebrae a month before I turned 16, I would have enlisted as well.

I’m thoroughly opposed to our out-of-control Defense Spending, our rampant invasions of foreign nations over the last three quarters of a century, the lie we tell ourselves about bringing Freedom and Democracy to foreign lands, and the premise of American Exceptionalism that fuels our ongoing Imperialist and Colonialist activities. But three of the men I admired most in my life were soldiers, two of them involved in an entirely illegal and unjustified conflict. Nevertheless, they were heroes to me, and heroic men otherwise. I can’t simply disengage from that reality, no matter how much I oppose the conditions that led to these men being in the positions they were in, to become the heroes they became.

All of that aside, I’ve never been particularly patriotic, but I am proud of these aspects of my family history. To disentangle that history from the associated American history is virtually impossible.

But if I proceed from here, I’ll be getting ahead of myself, and I prefer to avoid that if at all possible. Let’s get back to definitions.

If, by America, we mean the land that we include within the boundaries, I find it difficult to believe that anyone opposing Donald Trump’s Administration could be accused of hating the wide-ranging landscapes and environments to be experienced from Maine to Hawaii and Florida to Alaska. There are, no doubt, certain ecosystems that people dislike. I’m not a fan of places that are particularly hot and humid, for example. But it’s not the people opposing President Trump who want to develop that land, mine it, or drill for oil. That’s not loving the environment or the land, that’s loving what you can take from it. That belies a superficial and selfish motivation, not an appreciation for the land itself. It’s a short-sighted, short-term predation that leaves nothing of value behind. Clearly, it is not the land that Trump supporters are accusing Liberals, Leftists, and anyone not loyal to Trump of hating.

So, is it the people? For simplicity, in this section, I’ll focus on Republican vs. Democrat, as those are the two largest voting blocs. As America’s population became more culturally and ethnically diverse, it’s definitely true that both major parties became less homogenized as a result; however, it’s been the Democratic Party that has displayed the greater degree of diversity in Representation, something that has shown a steady increase over time. At the same time, it’s Donald Trump who has maintained the unwavering support of White Supremacist Hate Groups, in large part because of policies that are transparently focused on benefitting a homogenized culture of straight, cisgender, white, Christian males. White people do make up the majority of the American population, at almost three times the number of people as are classified as Hispanic or Latino, more than four times as many as those who are classified as Black or African American, nearly nine times as many as those who are labeled as Asian, and more than 24 times as many people as those classified in any other way (including those who identify as two or more ethnicities). In fact, White people make up more of the population than all of those ethnic groups combined. So, could one argue that the party appealing to White Supremacists is the party that loves the larger number of Americans simply by virtue of skin color? I suppose one could make that argument, but that ignores the other characteristics that appeal to those same people: straight sexual orientation, cisgender identification, Christian faith, and male-dominated hierarchy. Of course, all of that becomes moot when we acknowledge that nothing suggests that not being a White Supremacist means that one hates White people. In fact, I would venture to guess that most of the animosity one perceives as being directed toward the Right is reactionary in nature. That hate arises as a result of the contempt and dehumanization that have long been directed toward the demographic groups constituting the Left. I’ve discussed it in the past, but I feel it merits repeating that there is a substantial difference between hating a group of people for who they are versus hating them for what they do. It seems apparent to me that it’s not the American people we’re talking about when it comes to hating America.

Is it the Democratic Republic established by the U.S. Constitution that Trump’s opponents are accused of hating? While the document certainly has its flaws, I’ve witnessed nothing from President Trump’s opponents that indicates widespread disdain for the Constitution. Both major political parties have been routinely accused of violating the Constitution, but only two Presidents in my lifetime have been impeached, and only one of them was impeached twice. And, in less than nine months in office, a total of 138 Executive Actions have been partially or fully blocked, and another 94 remain pending, with only 93 that were allowed to stand. At least ten of those decisions blocking Executive Actions were made by judges who were appointed by Trump himself. While it has largely been ignored, President Trump has clearly and brazenly violated the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses, breaking with tradition and not divesting himself of his assets and placing them in a blind trust to prevent conflicts of interest. Several State, Federal, and Foreign entities have paid incalculable amounts of money to Trump properties; however, a House Oversight Committee reported that President Trump accepted more than $7.8 Million from 20 Foreign Governments during his first term. To the contrary, Barack Obama requested guidance from the Department of Justice before accepting the Nobel Peace Prize due to the financial component. Of course, no other President has invited the 220 largest investors in a cryptocurrency (that business partners launched just before they took office) to a private dinner. Anyone pretending the Trump Administration isn’t a den of graft and corruption is either lying or wilfully ignorant. It could be argued that there’s hardly a Constitutional Amendment that Donald Trump hasn’t attempted to violate or redefine to suit his desires. To me, this means that his supporters either display a similar disrespect for the Constitution or a level of such ignorance concerning it that their stated appreciation of it would be rendered moot.

Could it be the idealistic American Dream that Trump and his supporters are accusing his opposition of hating so vehemently? Rooted in the Declaration of Independence’s statement that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable Rights, including Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, the American Dream has long been understood to mean that this is a place where anyone can achieve success and a better life through hard work and determination. I’ve seen no indication that people opposing President Trump are in any way opposed to the American Dream. But it can be clearly ascertained from Donald Trump’s actions that he struggles to redefine “all men” in such a way as to exclude all but those like him. He attacks immigrants (documented and undocumented alike), political opponents, the free press, women, the impoverished, the elderly, the infirm, and anyone who doesn’t subscribe to his revisionist view of the American Dream. Now that he’s openly admitted to adopting the playbook laid out in Project 2025 (though anyone who had read it previously was already aware of this), there’s a clear redefinition of core American Values at the heart of his platform. This is not the behavior of someone who loves the American Dream. These are the actions of someone who hopes to co-opt, manipulate, and convert it until it becomes a vehicle for his personal gain.

I don’t believe there’s any further need to define what is meant by hate in this discourse. It’s readily apparent that Trump and his supporters have no love, appreciation, or respect for the land beyond what they can consume from it. The people of America, unless they subscribe to a particularly rigid philosophy and meet an equally rigid set of physiological and psychological conditions, are not welcome in Trump’s vision of what America should be. The Constitution (and the Government bestowed by it) is an opportune shield when convenient and an obstacle to be shredded when not. The American Dream is perceived as something only an elite class (those who meet the previously discussed conditions) should have access to. This is flagrant disrespect for and contempt of everything we apply as a definition of what makes America, America. Who are these people to accuse anyone else of hating America?

I’ve heard it said that people who fight for equality and equity by pointing to past injustices and the ripple effects present today are guilty of hating America. Recognition of unpleasant and terrible elements within America’s past and present isn’t symptomatic of hatred for the country. Acceptance that we can and should be better is not a condemnation, but a guiding principle that was encoded within the Constitution itself. The purpose of Constitutional Amendments is to correct course where we were wrong or to adjust to changing times and conditions. Our Founding Fathers recognized that they couldn’t see the future and prepare the country for every eventuality, so they provided a method by which that lack of foresight could be accommodated. Condemning the systemic racism still present in all facets of American society isn’t hatred for White people, but a nudge and a reminder that there’s still work to do. We got started, for sure, but then (as a society) we got tired of exerting the effort because it wasn’t as easy as we hoped it would be, or because it was going to require serious structural changes that might inconvenience those of us who weren’t already being constantly inconvenienced by the existing structures. Hiding or erasing shameful truths from the past only serves to make it all that much easier to repeat the same mistakes. You can’t claim to love the country while wearing blinders and intentionally ignoring whole portions of what America is and was. We need to acknowledge the errors we’ve made and take responsibility to keep them from being repeated. We need to speak truth to the lies we’ve told ourselves regarding our place in the world and the lofty ideals we pretend to ascribe to as we impose our will on other nations, as well as the people of this one. We need to come to terms with our treatment of marginalized people of all kinds, here and abroad. That is what loving America looks like: helping her to become the nation we believed her to be when we were children, the nation our Founding Fathers believed she could become, and the nation that people from foreign lands seek to make their home. We can be better, and we should always be progressing ahead while keeping an eye on the past, so the lessons we’ve learned are never forgotten.

I don’t believe this perspective is exclusive to me. I think this outlook is perhaps more widespread, and that people are proud of certain elements of America or American History, while dissatisfied or even disgusted with others. That seems to me to be a reasonable perspective, because America is not just one thing, of course. If this is what someone defines as hating America, I’m afraid I don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.

Political Violence and the Selective Acknowledgment of It

/ MeltdownMessiah / 1 Comment

Political Violence comes in more shapes and sizes than Pokémon. And yet, it’s only ever a specific variety that most people seem willing to acknowledge, and then only when it suits the narrative they prefer to frame. When someone is killed in an act of direct Political Violence, hand-wringing, condemnation of physical violence, and proclamations that we are better than this inevitably follow closely behind. This is true, even (or especially) when the violence in question was a direct response to less overt forms of violence. You see, those more subtle forms of violent action are insidious in that people can easily dismiss them if they’re so inclined, but are often (if not always) more harmful.

Willhelm Frick, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Julius Streicher, and several others who were sentenced to death following the Nuremberg Trials had never killed anyone, and had (to the best of anyone’s knowledge) committed no acts of direct violence. In fact, Hermann Göring, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and Martin Bormann were among the minority, in that they had committed acts of direct violence and murder during their tenure within the Nazi Party. But, in 1946, we recognized that Political Violence comes in many forms, and the guilt of the 12 men who were sentenced to execution was not open to debate. Adolf Hitler, himself, has never been connected with evidence that he personally murdered anyone aside from possibly Eva Braun, before taking his own life. The same can be said for Joseph Goebbels, though he and his wife killed their six children and then themselves. These men, and many others, had been complicit and had knowingly issued propaganda and orders that led to the deaths of countless others.

Would anyone like to present the defense that these men were killed (or killed themselves to avoid being killed) because of their political opinions? Is that the extent of cultural relativism that we should be applying to the architects of the Holocaust? That’s what I keep hearing lately: that people shouldn’t be threatened, persecuted, or harmed over a difference of opinion. All I can assume is that many people need to better acquaint themselves with the definition of “opinion” before they start concerning themselves with differences between them.

Opinions are just assumptions or judgments that an individual develops regarding any particular topic. They can be informed or uninformed, but they’re little more than a subjective viewpoint with greater or lesser value depending on the expertise and the degree of authority invested in the individual sharing said opinions. Critiques of policy and ideology are political opinions. Whether they’re right or wrong, they’re opinions, and people are entitled to their own. Hate Speech, however, is not an expression of an opinion. Hate Speech is an attack, using dehumanizing and demeaning language to target an individual or a group of people based on features of their identity: Ethnicity, Nationality, Skin Color, Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, and so on. Hate Speech targets (often immutable) characteristics of the individual or group, for the purpose of expressing bigoted, biased, and prejudiced perspectives. Thus, we have the difference between those who condemn the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Government, compared to those who condemn Jewish people or the people of Israel as a whole. One is a criticism of policy and the actions taken by a group, and the other is a condemnation of a group of people based on either Ethnicity or Nationality, depending on whether we’re talking about Jewish people or Israeli people. There is a massive difference between the two things, and yet we see colleges and universities losing funding because certain people want to conflate these two things with false equivalence.

Hate Speech is, in reality, a form of Political Violence that gets shrugged off as nothing more than a difference of opinion, typically by those who are not impacted by that violence. Hate Speech and hateful rhetoric paved the way for the Holocaust, along with the more recent Genocides in Rwanda, Myanmar, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.

Sheltering Hate Speech under an umbrella by treating it as if it’s nothing more than another legitimate opinion that one is entitled to share is just part of the weaponization of public discourse. It promotes discrimination and violence, especially when it’s combined with disinformation/misinformation campaigns designed to reinforce the bigotry involved.

Still, one might, of course, look at those guilty men I referenced above and argue that they were guilty of War Crimes. Therefore, the sentences were both just and appropriate. But, by the same standard, our current Administration should also face a tribunal.

Despite no evidence supporting the claims and the US Intelligence Apparatus contradicting them, the Trump Administration confidently states that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is linked to Tren de Aragua, and that a U.S. strike on a foreign boat in international waters was justified because that boat was carrying cocaine to our border (sans evidence). By any standards, the killing of foreign civilians in international waters is (by definition) a War Crime. The Trump Administration is hardly alone in this. Every President in my lifetime has been guilty of actions that should constitute War Crimes. Why are we not holding ourselves to a higher standard than we held the Nazis in 1946?

But, of course, it’s not just War Crimes that we’re dealing with today. The current Administration repeatedly flaunts International and American Law, violates the Constitution, and works to erode the mechanisms of Democracy within America. Men like the late Charlie Kirk have been instrumental in both endorsing and encouraging those actions, as well as being directly involved in helping to place Donald Trump in the position of authority he presently holds.

Charlie Kirk fostered an environment of White Christian Nationalism throughout his time in the public eye. It takes little effort to find several instances of outright Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Xenophobia, and myriad other forms of Bigotry in his Podcasts, Social Media posts, and Public Appearances.

He repeatedly expressed a baseless and racist endorsement of the Great Replacement conspiracy, wherein non-whites were coming to America (and other Western Nations) to replace whites. Just last month, he claimed, “The Great Replacement of white people is far more sinister than any redistricting project.” The Great Replacement theory is directly linked to several acts of Political Violence, targeting non-whites. More importantly, the Great Replacement is virtually identical to the White Genocide conspiracies that have been core aspects of neoNazi ideologies for a long time now.

Charlie Kirk accused Transgender people of being predators and actively encouraged his listeners/viewers to bully and harass them. Transgender people, while making up a tiny fraction of the population, are somehow substantially more likely to be victims of violence than cisgender people are.

He couldn’t even manage to consistently maintain his performative support for Israel and condemnation of antisemitism, despite knowing that he needed to tow that line because it might be a bridge too far for some of his audience. Nevertheless, he still managed to spout off tired old antisemitic talking points about Jewish people controlling everything from higher education to Hollywood, pointing the finger at Jewish financiers of “Cultural Marxism,” and acting aghast at Jewish people promoting anti-white hatred despite wanting white people to do away with that same kind of hatred against them.

To pretend that isn’t often Political Violence is tantamount to saying that violence perpetrated against Jewish people by German citizens in 1940s Europe was not Political Violence. When the apparatus of government endorses, however tacitly, the dehumanization of a group of people, it requires extensive mental gymnastics to pretend that the acts of violence perpetrated against that group of people are not acts of Political Violence. It also requires an impressive gymnastics routine to pretend that the propagandists who spread the dehumanizing message aren’t complicit in the outcomes.

Was it not Political Violence when Omar Mateen murdered 49 people and injured more than 50 others at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL? He may have claimed to support the Islamic State, but his motivations (even according to his father) were based on the same anti-LBGTQ+ sentiment we hear expressed by White Nationalists regularly. Since LGBTQ+ rights (and the existence of LGBTQ+ people) are treated like a political football, that would make any violence arising from homophobia and anti-Trans perspectives Political Violence. And this is State-Sanctioned violence, because Republicans certainly dedicate a lot of bandwidth to demonizing LGBTQ+ people, while Democrats often turn a blind eye to the violence perpetrated against them. And, whether Liberals want to accept it or not, neglect and dismissal are forms of Political Violence as well. But that’s a discussion for another time.

Men like Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, Nick Fuentes, and even Donald Trump have a particular skill, even if they lack any others. They can extrapolate from their own insecurities, fears, and failures to develop a form of demagoguery that plays on those same weaknesses in an audience. This only works when the demagogue is in the majority, because for some people, there’s always an undercurrent of resentment and fear associated with imagining the loss of the power that comes with being the majority. Some of that, I’m sure, arises from the assumption that (if the roles are reversed) they will be treated as poorly as they have treated the minority group(s) within society.

Men like Kirk taste fear and weakness in their audience the way a shark tastes blood in the water, and they’re just as predatory about it. They stoke that fear with misinformation and cruelty, dehumanizing anyone who isn’t part of that majority group, and assuring the audience that they can rest assured of their superiority. They make them feel threatened by the outsiders, regardless of the fiction required to do so, because they know these people won’t risk eroding the false confidence they’ve built up by digging too deep or tugging at threads that could unravel everything.

And, as that manipulation leads to the inevitable results, they hide behind the shield of Free Speech, insisting that they’re just asking questions, voicing their opinions, or engaging in healthy debate. We’ve seen this happen several times in the past, with January 6th, 2021, as one of the most vivid examples. The architects of the direct Political Violence are smugly distancing themselves and feigning a sense of horror at what’s happening, as they assume no one will recall how openly they encouraged all of it.

One way or another, there needs to be consequences for the Political Violence perpetrated by those who conveniently, like cowards, hide behind a misapprehension of what “Opinion” means. And, just as important, people need to learn that calling for violence against one’s oppressors and those who have wished or encouraged violence against them is not at all the same thing as wishing harm on people just because they have a different opinion. Malcolm X wasn’t the same as the white racists who fought to maintain segregation and oppose the Civil Rights Act, because he called for reactionary violence. He was already the victim of Political Violence, and was only speaking the same language as those who perpetrated that violence. If you threaten someone or encourage others to act violently toward them by dehumanizing them and manipulating others into thinking they are a threat, you are not expressing an opinion. That isn’t merely a matter of differing political viewpoints.

Regarding the present situation, and the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s apparent assassination, we don’t even know if it was an act of Political Violence. It stands to reason that it probably is, but it’s just as likely to be someone who agreed with him on most accounts as it is to be someone who was politically opposed to his ideology, stripped of the Hate Speech and hateful rhetoric. After all, the same people storming the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, were the same people most vocally supportive of “Back the Blue” perspectives, yet they assaulted police officers without any compunction. When one promotes an atmosphere of hate and fear, in which violence is encouraged, we’re just as likely to see that violence turned upon people in the same group, the moment fractures appear. It’s worth keeping that in mind.

Persecution and Exploitation, the Tools of the Weak and Afraid

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

As near as I can place it, the greatest problem we have as a society here in America (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the Western World) is that there are whole cultural groups who perceive any and all interactions with others through a lens of persecution and exploitation. They can’t conceive of anything else. To them, it’s an alien concept that those interactions could be cooperative or mutually beneficial. It’s a shortcoming, and a necessary byproduct of patriarchy, the corrupting influence of certain religious ideologies, and Capitalism.

These groups, when told that they’re no longer allowed to persecute or exploit others, can only imagine that they must be on the receiving end of persecution and exploitation. That’s the only thing they know, and they lack the necessary imagination to comprehend that a loss of privilege is not the same thing as persecution. After so long, always being in control, they can’t accept the loss of it or recognize that the loss is nothing more than that of the shackles that they forced on those upon whom they preyed.

It doesn’t matter if it makes no sense. It will never make sense to anyone not wrapped up in delusions of exceptionalism and their own sense of being what is “normal” and what is “right.” If you’re not them, you’re something less. If they’re not allowed to treat you as being beneath them, they believe it’s because you think yourself to be above them. And, if we’re being honest, not being like them (confined by such petty, binary terms) most certainly does place you above them.

To them, it’s one or the other. If they aren’t persecuting you, then they must be persecuted by you. That’s why you’ll routinely hear them tossing out ridiculous claims of how they’re being harmed or ostracized, even though nothing has changed. In their fevered imaginations, they sincerely believe there’s a “War on Christmas,” a “White Genocide,” or a “Male Loneliness Epidemic.” Again, nothing has changed, beyond the fact that they’re being told to grow the fuck up and behave as if they’re part of a civilized society. No one asked them to change anything about themselves, beyond opening their eyes to the reality that they are not alone, and they are not exclusively in control or entitled to it.

For some, without dominance, there is nothing.

I can’t help but feel that one of the greatest missteps we’ve made as a species is the shift to a perspective in which we have dominance over all other life on the planet, be it plant or animal. Some would claim that to be the natural order of things, but it wasn’t always that way, and in many circles it still is not. That way of thinking originated from somewhere specific and spread like a disease, much like the cultures from which it was spawned.

You see, once a culture begins to perceive anything as being beneath it, it’s a simple thing to perceive ANYTHING as being beneath it. Dominion over the plants and animals quickly becomes dominion over those who see the world differently. It translates easily into dominance over those who look different, or speak a different language, or pray to a different pantheon of gods. The world turns on its axis for centuries, and that thinking persists today.

Unfortunately, that way of thinking began with Genesis and the early Judaic people who shared that story and built upon it, so assured that they were special and destined for more. That philosophy wasn’t present in the pre-Judaic religious traditions of the Sumerians, Canaanites, Assyrians, and others. It’s also notably absent in essentially all other religious thinking around the world. That philosophy of human dominion is all but exclusive to the myths of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim people.

Other cultures saw divinity in the natural world, not as something separate and standing above it, but as an aspect of it. All of existence was a reflection of the divine and the bearer of divinity. Humans were a part of that natural world, and part of that divine manifestation along with everything else. But these new cultures, that spread from the Middle East, saw only themselves as a reflection of the divine in our world. They chose to perceive the natural world as something corrupt and needing to be overcome and subdued, from which to escape.

Some would dismiss all of these pantheistic or semi-pantheistic belief systems as primitive. But I feel like there’s a lot more of the “primitive” in cultures that feel conflict, war, and dominion over others are the natural order.

I think it says something that several great thinkers of the Enlightenment Era (men like Spinoza) embraced various forms of pantheism, as did some who influenced the birth of that age. But they also saw the danger in straying from the “dominant” faith in their corner of the world, and what happened to those who promoted a less “transcendent” interpretation of God, when men like Giordano Bruno were burned at the stake as heretics by the Catholic Church. Those faiths holding to their belief in dominion over all things are insidiously successful in devouring any opposition, and guarding their positions with jealousy that rivals what their god is capable of displaying.

Of course, there’s an exceptionally good chance that the original meaning of what they interpreted as “dominion” was intended more as what we think of as “stewardship,” caring for the plants and animals of the world. In which case, the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim believers have been disappointing the god they pray to for centuries or even millennia.

That seems far more likely to me than them being correct.

It may be time to reevaluate our relationship with the world we live upon and in. It’s the only one we’re guaranteed to have. Everything else is a fantasy (and one that can never be proven), only accepted on faith. And if that’s what someone chooses to believe, good for them, but they need to stop depending (and insisting) on the rest of the world going along with their delusions. We have a responsibility to maintain and care for the world upon which we depend for our survival.

Naturally, all of this appealed a great deal to the patriarchal, as strength and brutality lend themselves nicely to domination and forced compliance. It complements Capitalism well, a worldview and economic system that requires a minority of owners and a majority of subservient workers to feed their productivity upward as they receive the bare minimum to keep them placated. White Supremacy, of course, latched onto this way of thinking as well, looking down on cultures and ethnic groups unlike their own, as if theirs was the only one that should be.

And today, as always before, they project what they perceive as strength, but anyone with open eyes sees it for the transparent weakness of fear and contempt that it’s always been.

We only need to give them a mirror.