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The Beauty of Hate
I believe that the reason leftism tends to win is that hate is a more powerful emotion than love. This was the strength that guided Nazi Germany. Hitler had many interesting ideas for the economy which may or may not have worked, but what led to his success was his hatred of the Jews. That hatred made him popular.
This seems impossible in today’s more enlightened times, if one can avoid reading the perspective of German film director Werner Herzog: “Dear America: You are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of your people would kill another 1/3, while 1/3 watches.” That’s ridiculous, right? We’ve moved past hatred. Right?
My mother’s physician was a nice person. The 1970s had hit her harder than some, and she had a pleasant “live and let live” hippie vibe to her, and she was a very nice person. Until she killed my mother. That changed things. At least for me. It was a small mistake, really. Simple oversight. Perfectly understandable. To anyone except me. I spend my life trying to avoid small mistakes like that. So I expect more. And when you’re taking care of my mother, I expect a lot more. And I am, by God, keeping score. Well, actually, perhaps God is not keeping score. I suppose God may take a more charitable view of such oversights. But I do not. I’m keeping score. Perhaps God will forgive her doctor. But I never will. When my mother died, I learned a lot about hatred.
Early in my career, I had a patient who was addicted to narcotics. She attempted to calm my concerns about renewing her prescriptions, stating, “I don’t take these drugs to get high, I take them so I can feel normal.” That makes sense, if you understand addiction. It’s not right, it’s not wrong, but that’s the way it is.
My sister and I with our parents.
My visceral hatred of the physician who killed my mother makes me feel normal.
That sounds horrifying. But to me, it’s strangely comforting.
Hate is more powerful than love. It’s like a warm blanket that I wrap myself in, when I miss my Mom.
I take a dim view of human nature. Especially my own. When atheists say that no God could possibly love such flawed individuals as us, I am sympathetic to their view. It’s the only view of atheism that makes any sense to me. Who could possibly know me and love me, at the same time?
No one, of course. Except for my God, and my Mom.
She loves me, no matter how screwed up I am. It can be hard to see God, sometimes. But my Mom was always there, in plain sight, but in the background. Joining others in their praise of my good qualities, and remaining respectfully quiet when others would point out my obvious deficiencies. She was my biggest fan. Even when she shouldn’t have been.
Then one day she begins to cough. She’d never smoked. It was probably a cold or something. I was busy. I didn’t check on it, figuring that her doctor would be all over it. Her doctor wasn’t all over it, although she was a very nice person. My mother died of lung cancer soon afterward, once it spread to that remarkable brain of hers. What a brain. She was brilliant. What a beautiful brain.
I am thankful that I got to inherit part of her beautiful brain. And I take comfort in her loss by hating her doctor. I feel better. I really do. I love hatred. So is that love? Or is that hatred? I’m not sure. But I feel better. I really do.
Conservatism is based on love. You want others to do well, even if you don’t know them, and they do better than you. You love others, so you wish them well. You don’t tolerate others. You love others. So you wish them well.
Leftism is based on hate. It’s not fair that others live well while you struggle. Life is not fair, and you want compensation. Not for me, but for my mother, who deserved better than she got. Her loss was not my fault, but yours, somehow. So it’s up to you to compensate me for her losses. My vote depends upon your response to suffering you never understood. How could you possibly understand?
As a conservative, I love love. Love makes the world go ‘round.
Mom and I in 1969
As a little boy who misses his Mom, I love hate. It fills a gap that I can’t ignore. I feel better with hate.
So if you were running for office, which would you hope to take advantage of?
It’s easy to criticize politicians who prey on those who hate. But you’re merely projecting your own insecurities. Politicians don’t hate. Politicians are just trying to get votes. They don’t hate. Voters do. Voters like you and me, for example. Why?
Because hate is beautiful. Like so many awful things, it’s beautiful.
There’s a reason that no democracy can survive for long in this world.
I love love.
But hate is wonderful. It’s beautiful, and pure, and powerful, and wonderful.
Screw love. I feel better with hate.
My beautiful mother is gone.
So God help us all.
When I drink too much, and get depressed, and write something, I generally get up the next morning and delete it. This essay is a good example of why I do that.
But I kept this one, because this essay is also an effort to explain that once we discard the idea that there is an all-powerful and all-knowing God that loves us despite our obvious faults, we have given up hope of loving one another. Thus, once we move from “love thy neighbor” to “tolerate thy neighbor” we have given up hope for love, and all we are left with is hate. And our infatuation with the beauty of hate will lead us to forget what love really means.
Love feels good. But hate is addictive.
I miss my Mom.
God help us all.
Published in General
Thanks Doc.
Don’t necessarily assume that all doctors try their best. In addition to practicing Surgery for 30 years, I did some peer review. I also have a few stories about family members. There is a normal distribution of honesty and competence among doctors, as among any other group. I first became aware of this in a premed class when one of my classmates explained that he was going to medical school because “it is the way to get from the lower classes to the upper class.” I was not pleased to see him as a classmate the next year but he flunked out a year later.
I have suspicions that Chicago has worse doctors, on average, than other places I have practiced. Fee splitting was a prominent feature in Chicago until the 70s. I have explained fee splitting to a relative when asked why I did not return to Chicago to practice after medical school. The American College of Surgeons was founded, in large part, to combat this ethical issue. Classical fee-splitting is when surgeons pay GPs to send them patients. One way this is done is to use the GP as the assistant at surgery, which I have no problem with, but to then add up the fees for surgeon and assistant (the latter usually 20%) and divide them equally.
My relative, after I had explained this to him, said this explained his own experience. His wife, my cousin, had discovered a lump in her breast. Not having a primary doctor, she looked up a GP in the Yellow Pages. He sent her to a surgeon. She had a mastectomy and, on the day she was discharged, she asked him if she should make an appointment,. He told her, “You had better hope you never see me again as it will mean you have recurrence. ” Her postop care was by the GP and the fees for surgery were evenly divided between surgeon and GP. I consider this unethical but there is a provision in the coding for “postop care,” thus normalizing this unethical practice.
A few years later she did have recurrence. I remember them visiting us in California at that time. Subsequently, she was treated with early menopause, a common treatment in those days when therapy was still a bit primitive. However, instead of removing her ovaries, the usual way of ending hormone stimulation of the cancer, they radiated her ovaries, a practice I had never heard of. The breast cancer did not return but, about ten years later, she died of ovarian cancer, her breast cancer cured.
Last word:
I have never learned who chose this odd way of inducing early menopause. There is no proof that this caused the ovarian cancer but removing them would certainly have done so.
I should add that Chicago is probably not the only place where this was common. A friend was being inducted into the American College and his wife was in the audience. Next her was another young wife who was crying. She said she was so happy and so relieved that he was able to qualify as their community in Iowa was give over 90% to fee splitting and it had been hard for them to stay aloof from this unethical behavior and still make a living.
Quite. Temptation would never be a problem if the thing we were tempted by always seemed to be ugly, cruel, dangerous, destructive or wicked. It doesn’t. It usually takes the form of an appeal to a legitimate need or emotion but posits as a valid a response which may please the self, temporarily, but which will have destructive effects on others.
You might as well be describing Communism. It looks beautiful and it looks fair and just and it appeals to universal and legitimate concerns of belonging, purpose and concern for the weak. But it destroys you in the end.
On a much more positive note, I’ve been doing some research into Black-American history and we do have a capacity to move beyond hate.
And while I find this essay to be a little sappy, there is one particularly eloquent paragraph about forgiveness that involves, of all people, George Wallace.
George Washington Carver was also an exceptionally interesting man and demonstrates the capacity of human beings to love rather than hate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3CVmluYFtI
Same t’ing.
Yup. I am now and always have been convinced that Communism came straight from the mind of the Father of Lies.
I thank everyone for their kind words.
I haven’t been following this thread, for obvious reasons. It’s depressing for me. But I’m glad I read everyone’s thoughtful comments this morning.
I hope to compose a thoughtful response soon. Not now. Maybe later.
Thanks again. I really do appreciate your input.
See, Dr. Bastiat, you are doing good things even over the Internet. I’ve not been feeling well this past week, and I should have taken care of the issue earlier in the week, but I didn’t. So late last night, in part because I had read your post and I realized my own son would want me to get to a doctor, I went to the ER, and now I feel better. Thanks in some small way to you. :-)
“Love what is lovely, and hate what is hateful.” This was a Bible text read out in the marriage service of Prince William and Kate. Seems good to me.
Speak for yourself, von Aue.
5 FU is still first line of treatment for most colorectal and gastric (stomach) cancers.
I got into an argument with a group of oncologists saying that platinum thereapy like oxalyplatin is more effective than 5 FU.
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The formulary was wrong.
You were an intern.
not your fault.
So sorry about the untimely loss of your Mom and the pain that you have felt.