Hate and Anger are the currencies of the fallen. Hate and Anger as concepts will consume and control a person if not appropriately understood; the people who most sincerely want you to be outraged constantly are those who profit from manipulating you. There is a common thread linking a considerable number of the profiteers of hatred – fear. Once a Tucker Carlson, or a Rush Limbaugh, has corrupted you to Hate and Anger, you have to unlearn it. If your pastor hides behind Jesus’s love while telling you all the things and people to hate, you have to unlearn it. If your magic (R) politician has one set of rules for rich white people, another for everyone else, and does their best to get you to be Hateful and Angry at “Them” for your life, you have to unlearn it.
How does one unlearn powerful and, at times, overwhelming emotions like Hate and Anger? Fear lies beyond the boundaries of these emotions because we have to change not to experience them anymore. Change is different, and different is scary. The profiteers of hatred know this and do all they can to keep you from moving beyond your fear. If you never move beyond your fear, you will fall back into where they want you – Hateful and Angry. If you are Hateful and Angry, they can manipulate you into making poor decisions, often against your best interests.
In the United States of America, we see this pattern constantly. Fox pushes false narratives as a business model to keep white supremacy and white-collar corruption cover. Their viewers vigorously defend it with Olympic-level mental gymnastics until they feel the need to create safe-spaces wherein they won’t have to anymore. Such partitioning and anonymization of society have allowed radical elements to be increasingly influential. Domestic white terrorism poses more of a genuine threat than ever, and not even our nation’s capital is safe from fascist threats and confederate ghosts. White people moan about being tired of hearing about racism but imagine what it feels like for people of color to live it. That requires a level of self-reflection and empathy the profiteers of hatred don’t want them to have as it cuts into their bottom line, and so we have a clear divide.
Part of Hate and Anger’s effectiveness is it can be effortless to shift the focus of our energies onto someone else. While other people cause legitimate traumas in the world, some individuals are victims; the profiteers of hatred exclusively want you to focus on other people. If your energy is solely focused on someone else, you relinquish control. If you are not in control, growth is impossible, and if you cannot grow, you will always contribute to their profit margins. The profiteers of hatred want you to keep tuning in to get your outrage fix. They need you to come to them to find out the problems, the talking points, and that they are the only ones you can trust. If you discover you can push past the fear and think for yourself, you threaten their business.
Every profiteer has a different method to hook you in and pretend they aren’t evil. Tucker Carlson, for instance, hides behind the appearance of looking confused, setting up an opinion as to if it was a question, and going to court saying that he is an entertainment show and no reasonable person would take him seriously. However, the people watching him take him seriously and attempt to ponder his leading premises as if they were genuine questions. Anger is an emotion that draws us to protect, and the profiteers of hatred corrupt what could be a necessary and righteous emotion into something self-serving and destructive. The profiteers of hatred make people want to ‘protect’ against a threat that isn’t real, so the profiteer and the sponsor can make more money.
After this election, the Republicans wasted no time introducing a dizzying and tragic amount of bills to restrict the right to vote. Republicans set up a lie that the election was fraudulent; they spread that lie as much as possible and now are using that fear to justify helping rich white people. The profiteers of hatred are seizing on an opportunity to pit one group against another to help themselves further. However, in the wake of shootings, those same people say we can’t act; to make things political would be too soon, and the time for discussion will come later. It is not in the interests of their profit to do anything, and so they won’t.
The profiteers of hatred want you to feel weak and helpless; they want you to feel like there’s nothing you can do, and so you give in and give up. You being ultimately weak and helpless is false. Breaking free of any cycle is scary, especially if it’s all you’ve known and have been fed. It doesn’t matter if it’s tribalism, trauma, confirmation bias, etc., pushing past the fear and understanding there is a world past the fear, and there is so much more beyond Hate, and Angry is in itself a reward. It doesn’t happen overnight and is a continuous process. We have angry moments, even when we live outside of being manipulated by the profiteers of hatred. You don’t have to be fallen; you can be redeemed, and having angry moments, as opposed to dealing in the currency of Hate and Anger, though, is a life worth living.
~Monk Anchorwind.
~Author’s Note – I’ve written about White Supremacy and America’s Woes so often I really wanted to write something that was both micro and macro in scale. I hope that came across. Our journeys to take responsibility for ourselves have rippling consequences – both in our day to day lives and impacting change on a societal level. Cheers.