“I have decided to stick to love…Hate is too great a burden to bear.” ― Martin Luther King Jr. “If you can get the lowest white man to believe he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him someone to look down on and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
LBJ to Bill Moyers Those who observe people who live with, or by, hate as opposed to those who live by love, however imperfectly they (or, rather, we) do so will agree with the first observation. Hate is a burden to bear. And yet, it is a burden which too many actually choose to bear. At least one ‘reason’, or excuse, is explained in the second quotation.
Feeling inherently superior, probably especially when we know inwardly we’re anything but that, is something for which too many will give too much! Even if it is a burden, it’s one which they will carry proudly and resist most efforts to separate themselves from it.
(I wonder: does goose-stepping make that burden easier to carry? I wouldn’t be too surprised.)
To what can we liken such hate? Perhaps to something edible which tastes very sweet but, then, just ‘sits’ in your innards? If anyone else has what might be an apter analogy, feel free to offer it here!
And does the observation made by the second quotation also keep the ‘marks’ of hate coming back for more? Maybe that’s one factor, but I’ll venture a guess that there’s another factor at work here.
If someone offered you such a sweet, would you say ‘no dice’ or would you not want to think, perhaps fairly desperately, of yourself as a ‘mark’ and thus return for more? I hope I’d do the former, but then I’m only one man. How many people are out there that would rather do d.n.a. (for dam’ near anything) rather than admit they fell for something, even once?
Of course, there are also those who know dam’ good and well how privileged they are and who do not want to give up those privileges, although you might have to bring in wild horses in order to get them to admit it. You might even have to harness them behind those horses before they’ll cop to the truth!
And if truth be known, those current privileges would not be given up but merely extended to include all of us and thus be converted from privileges into rights. Which would also have Tuckums, Vanity Hannity, ‘Judge’ Jeanine and IngraHAM and all the other Murdoch puppets howling, along with QAnon and all the other loonies! And this is because they don’t really believe in love except for self-love and their narrowly-as-possible defined tribe! These are the bipeds of whom LBJ’s observation is, unfortunately for us all including the above-named, most true.
But others out there, for whom the ‘benefits’ of thinking oneself better than (fill in the blank) are more elusive, y’all might want to think about whether carrying that burden is really doing you any good at all. Make your vaunted ‘Christianity’ more than just a tribal label. Drop the hate and open yourself to actually liking some folks different from you and treating them as you would your ‘own’.
And remember, Our Lord asked an audience, what credit is it to you if you love only ‘your own’? And that means appreciating them as they are — not trying to make them into copies of y’all. Think about it. Maybe those who get more benefits are the ones making you into marks. As the smart people say, follow the money and see who gets it in the end.
