Don't hate.

Robert Leo Heilman, an Oregonian, contributed a critical piece to the University of Oregon’s magazine, Oregon Quarterly, about irrational people (specifically the far right-wingers). I thought it was a tad smug, a little presumptuous, but overall, pretty thoughtful. An excerpt that I think rings especially true:

I have known a great many people over the years—nice people, decent people—who cling to harmful and repugnant beliefs that are racist, homophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic, or politically intolerant. What they all have had in common is their high levels of frustration and fear. Each has felt insecure and cheated somehow, denied their fair share of power, ignored and disrespected. Many (though not all) have been economic losers, bitter about their failure to succeed. Some have been emotional cripples, unable to sustain loving relationships and unable to tolerate ambiguity. Many have had their lives fall apart due to compulsive boozing or drug abuse or gambling. Others have simply been crushed repeatedly by an indifferent and impersonal system of things that exploits them because it is profitable to do so. Some are people who blame themselves for having suffered terrible blows that came for no good reason at all. All became, in one way or another, shell-shocked veterans of life itself.
What is there to cling to when, by your own doing or by others or by cold fate, you have lost everything? Stripped of dignity, mired in failure, caged in by tough circumstances and uncontrollable forces, what is left to people but to embrace comforting nonsense and to rage against perceived injustice?

Click here for the full piece.