FALLING IN HATE AGAIN

Americans have an enormous capacity for love.

Warmth is what I most associate Americans with, a comforting acceptance of others; a delightful graciousness and interest in the well-being of others, an attractive characteristic denoting well-mannered acceptance.

Why then are they falling in hate again?

The dismal future of a post-covid America at war with itself and with an administration filled with gun-toting warmongers doesn’t display the America that could be in any good way whatsoever.

Whatever happened to all those romantic movies and rom-com series? Were they all simply for-profit idealistic expressions of the bonhomie and positive emotions, decent behavior and determination to see wrongs righted created as a mirage for money?

Where is the American psyche headed? Has what appeared to be idealism corroded into bitter cynicism and adversarial spite? Surely the world’s richest nation can do better than this, or are my many experiences with Americans informing me incorrectly? Where have the easy smiles gone, the neighborly goodwill and charming fellow-feeling? I swear they were not illusory attributes. But where are they reflected within the American zeitgeist now?

The raging street battles in recent times, the riots, police beatings and worse... what is happening to the nation that originated the Summer of Love?

Why is it falling in hate again? A partisan war where two sides spit hatred at the other with no seeming compromise possible. And why is the Biden administration putting on khaki fatigues ready to make war on the rest of the world?

Nothing good can come of any of this.

This time, unlike The Summer of Love we are more likely to see A Winter of Utmost Discontent. The soft side of the American character is being infected by the hard side we saw in America’s regime change wars, “Kill ‘em all and let God sort them out!” was the cry from those certain Americans who exclusively read The Old Testament, muscular “Christians”, more interested in smiting enemies than turning the other cheek with Jesus.

The ‘Forever War’ against international terrorism initiated by Bush, Cheney and their fellow warmongers is turning inward to drive Trump’s agenda to win with his forces against those of an equally dangerous liberal elite. That war is likely to be just as bloody in the sense of being divisive as any America has waged in the Middle East, and which through the Biden team it is seemingly intent on continuing.

What hope is there that the Americans I knew and loved will rise once more to defeat both the Trump hordes and the liberal warmongers? Sadly they are nowhere in sight as yet. But I’m sure they exist... are they struck dumb, is the present situation simply too overwhelming, did 9/11 put limits on their love, qualifications, suspicions and a series of unfullfillable checks before expressing it?

As we watch America dissolve before our eyes some of us may welcome the reduction of its capacity to do the harm it did to us over the past few years. But the introversion of its population may not at all be reflected in its government, quite the opposite I suspect. The enemy ‘over there’ is always a handy tactic when there’s trouble at home.

I see no Summer of Love in prospect. No renaissance of the ever-friendly American.

Tragically I see only an ever-greater falling in hate... again.