Hate Waiting To Happen

A remark made by Joe Biden the other day neatly expressed something I’ve been thinking about: “Hate never goes away,” Biden said. “In all the years I’ve been involved [in politics], I thought once we got through it, it would go away. But it doesn’t. It only hides. It only hides until some seeming legitimate person breathes some oxygen under the rocks where they’re hiding and gives it some breath.”

There are a lot of sulky, aggrieved, resentful, uninformed, and misinformed people who mostly aren’t usually particularly vocal or civically engaged, but are responsive to incitement by demagogic characters who exude hate and spew lies and venom. That’s the oxygen Biden is referring to, and these people, when they are exposed to this kind of noxious drivel from Trump or Trump-emulators, lack the innate decency of character to act responsibly and they feel relief in exuding hate and spewing lies and venom too. It makes them feel like, finally, they are contenders.