The Machinery of Hate, Pt 1

You don’t have to stop calling it Racism. Racism exists and it’s not good and it would be good and it is important to prioritize, especially, State Sponsored racism, for example the criminalization of society which affects poor people of which black people are disproportionally represented. We need to decriminalize living and we need to do it now and we need immediately release anyone who the State has put in prison because they were made a criminal by society, non-violent drug offenders come right to mind. This is where I have failed, where I have been complicit, where I have been afraid to speak out, where I have been apathetic and maintained the attitude that if it’s not happening to me, it doesn’t matter. I’m ashamed of this behavior and this moment in time has woken me up to my complacency and the injustice it’s helped foster. As a white skinned brother I say we need to do more to address the injustices that our black skinned brothers and sisters are bringing up and we need to do it now.

But there is a larger villain than racism. There’s an issue that’s so fundamental and so ingrained that it hides in plain site even as it spreads. This villain is so old and wise and thorough that it has convinced many of us it doesn’t exist, even as we demonstrate it. This villain is so crafty that it is able to attack cloaked as it’s opposite. This villain is so deadly that it has us teaching our own children how to embrace it. This villain is so prevalent that it has entire systems of machinery that help do it’s work.

This villain is Hate.

Racism as we see it today can not exist without Hate but Hate can surely exist without Racism. Hate is internally sown and infects everything that comes through it’s filter. Hate flavors everything. Racism is externally focused and can be called many things, all of them basically meaning hatred of another person for the differences you see in them. A loving person will not be a racist person and that’s a heavy sentence to put out there, but it’s true.

A loving person will not be a racist person (in the way we understand Racism today). That doesn’t mean that we must all be loving in order to have Justice (but it might) but it does mean that there is only one cure for Racism, there is only one cure for injustice, but it’s a real cure, it’s a final cure, it’s the ultimate cure, it’s the cure for Hate which is the cause of racism. It’s Love.

When I look at the Machinery of Hate, it’s so complete. It’s literally like in all the movies ever made. It’s Mordor, it’s The Dark Side, it’s the Kracken, it’s the Devil. If you haven’t read Joseph Campbell, and you’re concerned about this struggle, you MUST read or listen to his series with Bill Moyers, “The Power of Myth” because he talks about the Heroes Journey and he talks about the fact that none of this, none of what we face today is new, it’s been with us for all time and the “Labyrinth is fully known” because it’s been traveled by the heroes that have come before.

The Machinery of Hate is too subtle and sublime to dismantle as you would a bomb or a prison or a political system or even a society. You could dismantle all of these things and you will not touch the Machinery of Hate, the machine will chug on because it doesn’t exist outside yourself. For a terrifying example of the Machinery of Hate – watch the last scene in “Devil’s Advocate” with Keannau Reeves and Al Pacino. This is the Machinery of Hate. I am no God fearing person, I’m not religious in the popular sense but the analogy is powerful and the task is daunting. In fact the task is so daunting that it’s much preferable to call the problem something else, like Racism, because then we have a villain that is outside ourselves and who doesn’t love a villain outside themselves. This is such a problem because in the process of trying to achieve Justice today, people are using Hate. It doesn’t matter what side you’re on in the fight because you’re not on the side you say you’re on. You’re on the side you act like you’re on. And if you act from Hate or with Hate, you are on that side, with all the others on that side.

The Machinery of Hate. This is what killed George Floyd. And if you want Justice you have to call it by it’s name.