“It is much more immoral to claim virtue without fully living with its direct consequences.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game
On November 18, 2023, the City of Pleasant Hill, California, held a walk against hate, or as they called it, with pious flourish: “A United Against Hate Week Unity Walk.” I suspect that most participants were either Woke fools, for whom this walk afforded an opportunity to strut about like self-satisfied peacocks, or people afraid to not participate and risk being thought of as somehow “for hate” or “against unity.” I don’t know which is worse, the fool or the coward. Any effort supposedly against an abstract emotion, such as hate, is virtue signaling at its most masturbatory.
I have not a scintilla of doubt that the participants believe themselves enlightened, virtuous, and far better people than those terrible people with hatred in their hearts. We’ll show those haters! Look, we’re helping! Why, they’re so darn against hate, they probably hate haters. Surely, they’d hate this blog post, not that it takes much to enrage an anti-hater.
The truth of the matter is they didn’t do diddly-squat. The walkers deluded themselves mightily if they thought this walk made the world a better place. It did not reduce the amount of hate in the world so much as one nanogram. Participating in this march did not make them morally superior to anyone else, nor did it prove there is no hate in their own hearts. But it did add more imbecility to the world. This was performative theater done, not to improve the world with concrete actions, but for their own aggrandizement.
Actions “against hate” are futile. Hate is a normal human emotion, which I wrote about in an earlier blog post (February 6, 2023: “The hate in our hearts means we’re human”). The capacity for hate is found within the heart of every human being, along with love, greed, generosity, courage, cowardice, and all the other components which make up our individual personalities. A walk against hate is a walk against accepting that we are human beings, imperfect creatures who are an amalgam of virtues and vices which we express in myriad ways. Claiming to lack hate in one’s heart is to reveal oneself as a liar. This was not a walk against hate. It was a liars walk. Insufferably sanctimonious liars.
I’m certain hypocrisy lurked in the shadows at this event, as these lemmings trudged along their route. I say this because I bet these anti-haters are situationally selective in the so-called hate they’re against.
Gasp! You mean they in fact do hate? Yes. I guarantee they do.
Since they’re likely Woke—not that the Woke have a monopoly on such silliness—imagine the emotion they experience in relation to people who support the right to bear arms or oppose abortion. Or people who are against illegal immigration and want immigration laws enforced. Or, horror of horrors, those who like Donald Trump. I doubt they are infallibly virtuous souls—virtue as defined by them—who have no animosity toward climate realists or those who oppose age-inappropriate materials in their children’s schools. I bet they aren’t keen on people who can define a woman or insist on using accurate pronouns despite the demands of the referred-to gender fascists (a crime the Woke, in Orwellian fashion, call misgendering). I hope someone at the walk wore a MAGA hat. I’m sure he or she was greeted with less than loving glares, if not outright open hostility.
Hate has its place. I hate pedophiles, acid attackers, and rapists. I hate people who harm children with their vile gender ideology. I’d believe myself a far worse person if I didn’t have loathing in my heart toward such people. Hate also provides the contrast to make love the wonderful emotion that it is. True love; not self-declared love crowed as performative theater (a pro-love walk would be equally inane).
People reading this might ask: “Why are you being so mean? These walkers were well-meaning.” Firstly, I’m not a nice person. I am mean. Secondly, they weren’t well-meaning. They are intrusive busybodies who fail to realize that what’s in another person’s heart is none of our business, and is irrelevant, anyway. How we act despite our faults and foibles is what makes us the person we are and the world we live in. A person may hate another person for reasons both petty and profound. The important thing is how he behaves towards that other person despite the hate in his heart. This is the only thing that matters. Society only has a right to involve itself with the physical manifestations of our thoughts and feelings, not that these thoughts or feelings exist in the first place.
Actions against what we believe is in another person’s heart, rather than restricting ourselves to the physical manifestations of it (either for or against), is fascism. Fascism aims to control speech and emotions and thoughts. These walkers are fascists—or, at the very least, enablers of fascism. Therefore, I am not going to concede that these participants are well-meaning. I’m not going to concede that they’re either free of hate or have it to a much lesser degree than those they consider morally inferior. In fact, I’ll further bet they support causes which result in direct harm to others (e.g., undermining the justice system, global warming hysteria, open borders, transgender ideology, critical race theory).
I’d rather a person be honest about the hate in his heart than be a fool who denies he’s a human being replete with all our virtues and vices. Next year, use this walk as the opportunity to pick up litter or adopt a homeless pet. Walk to demand that our district attorney aggressively prosecute shoplifters. These are tangible actions rather than a public display of vacuousness.
Finally, what does it even mean to be “against” hate. Do they intend or hope to extirpate this emotion from their fellow man? Do they think the world would be a better place absent all hate? Some particularly delusional über-fascists consider the issue so important that they want to declare hate a “public health emergency.” I guarantee their definition of “hate” is both ridiculously expansive and surgically targeted at their political enemies.
Do not fall for the evil siren song of these malevolent do-gooders. These are not nice people. Ask yourself these two questions: If a vaccine were created that eliminated hate (and I’ve seen people suggest this as a noble goal), would you take it? Would you force others to take it?
A fool or a coward would agree to take the vaccine, the fool eagerly so. A fascist will insist that others do. Such a vaccine would not result in paradise. A hellish dystopia would be the outcome.
You’ve been warned…
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