Love is all you need
I’ve been wrestling with conflicting emotions for several years now. Can we talk? It will be therapeutic — for me, at least; maybe for others as well. I’ve argued many times people who can’t tell when they’re being lied to are just plain stupid. They’re ignorant, of course, by definition: If you think something is true that isn’t, you’re ignorant of that fact. But when you’ve been told dozens, hundreds of time it’s a lie, what could possibly be the reason that you don’t get it, other than stupidity?
Problem is, I have friends who voted for Trump, and I’m absolutely, positively convinced that they’re not stupid — not even close.
One of them is the father of a friend of mine, and both he and his daughter are very, very smart — right up to the edge of that kind of brilliance that’s not quite right, like Isaac Newton. (Google it). Not to worry; lots of very smart people are a little off.
The other person is one of the first people I met the very day I arrived in Springville. We were very close for five years; then Trump came along, and we were, to say the least, not on the same wave length. Trump was going to “shake things up,” — not identify specific problems and provide well-informed reasons why his solutions were the best, just “shake things up.” He was going to do this as soon as he found out “what the hell is going on” — no specific list of what was going to be investigated, no logical enumeration of our most important public issues, prioritized by experts and analyzed in preparation to craft precise technical solutions; just find out “what the hell is going on.”
It sounded deliciously vague and mysterious. But it was deliberately vague in order to cover for his ignorance. And the lies: He had told 506 during his campaign; he eventually told 30,573 lies during his four year term — 504 on my birthday in 2020! Surely she would catch on, eventually. She didn’t. At least I don’t think so. We haven’t spoken in five years. I miss her.
What permits these otherwise reasonable people to believe the lies is hate. They hate Newsom, hate Pelosi, hate Hillary, hate the black guy — whoever they’re told to hate. Intellectuals talk about ideas, average people talk about events, but the least intellectual only talk about people.
This is where these folks are stuck. They don’t analyze the candidate or officeholder’s position on issues. They don’t even pass judgment on their actions. They just hate them. That allows them to accuse their enemies of being responsible for whatever happened, even if it clearly wasn’t within their power to affect the outcome.
Hate clouds their judgment. It changes the brain chemistry, and causes anxiety, paranoia and obsessive thinking. And since hate temporarily raises levels of cortisol and adrenaline in their bloodstream, they can actually become addicted to the little high they get from hating: They’re “hate junkies.”
Love is the answer. Stop hating. Focus on issues and events. You can have preferences, but base them on facts, not on hate. Here, dear friend, this song’s for you: Love Is All You Need.
Les Pinter is a contributing columnist and a Springville resident. His column appears weekly in The Recorder. Pinter’s new book, HTTPV: How a Grocery Shopping Website Can Save America, is available in both Kindle and hardcopy formats on Amazon.com.