The virus that wouldn't die

In her routine, the stand-up comedian and actor, Sarah Silverman had a valid observation: She said that she is a product of her upbringing.  Her liberal activism is not a surprise, she said, given that she grew up with progressive Jewish parents.

You are perhaps nodding in agreement.

What about the children who grew up with parents who taught them to hate?  It is not difficult to imagine that there are adults who hate pick-your-group, and these adults have kids.  They are not going to teach their kids to love everybody when they are filled with hate for some "wrong" kind of people, right?  (Here's a lengthy essay on one such real life person, if you are interested.)

modi, putin, trump, duterte, and the like (all men?) have mainstreamed hate.  What previously was said and done only behind closed doors and in secret is now openly said and done.  Unlike the small pox or polio virus, hate apparently cannot be completely eliminated, and it keeps coming back to cause epidemics over and over again.  And, in the process, the hate virus infects even people who were brought up by parents who taught their children well.

Over the past few years, it seems that Muslims have displaced Blacks as the most hated group.  It is just bizarre that the hate virus goes after new targets if attacking the old targets do not produce the virulence that was once possible.  It does not matter to the religious that their messiah preached about love, and not about hate.  We humans are messed up.

Even the Buddha's name cannot stop his followers, it seems.  Yes, I am referring to the crazy hate-filled Buddhist monks leading the war against Muslims in Myanmar.  I first blogged about this back in April 2013.   Imagine that!

In 2014, I wrote that it is practically game over when even Buddhists commit genocide.  In 2015, I was shocked that even the Dalai Lama could not get the attention of the Myanmar politicians; they didn't care for what the respected religious leader had to say.

Earlier this year, before the fascist's official swearing-in, I wrote that we should stop saying "never again" given how much we have stood by witnessing the Myanmar genocide.  Should we be surprised then that the rest of the world has gone on with its business of hating immigrants, Muslims, Blacks, gays, trans, ...

Is hate, or evil,  a permanent feature of the human condition?  Or, "As the American clergyman William Sloane Coffin put it: “Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer, and nothing is more difficult than to understand him.”"