Trump hate. I don't like these feelings. I don't want these feelings. I have spent a long lifetime learning - or trying to learn - forgiveness. It is the most difficult but the most desirable of emotions - for to forgive not only lifts the burden of anger and hatred from the "forgiver" but it restores to the "forgiven" the humanity that we have denied him or her, even it he or she does not deserve it. Forgiveness is not about the deserving - it it were they would be no need to forgive. All this is easier said than done. I have been fortunate in not feeling hate for many people - those who have done me some real or perceived injury I prefer to remove from my life by simply saying "gone" - to be forgotten - out of the address book and out of my life. But the antipathy that I feel for Donald Trump awakens my boyhood feelings about Barkin - the kid who tried to bully me - and pretty much succeeded - at at summer camp in Maine (little did he know until too late that he was messing with the wrong kid - Sherman the ten year old heartless avenger - lacking a cape and magical powers but possessing the means to be truly mean) and in a greater sense there was my hatred for all the fascist leaders who controlled the Europe of my youth and who murdered millions. That was serious hatred, not to be confused with Barkin.
Since I was a kid during WW2 I imagine it was a hereditary hatred that my anti-fascist parents had passed on to me. And Hitler and his henchmen gave us the faces we needed to hate.
When I see a photo of Trump I am reminded of the legion of dictators, racists, and bad guys who peopled the newsreels of my boyhood days - all of them the recipients of my fear and loathing - and I had hoped never to feel this way again. Hate is that genie in the bottle - hard to lure back and cork up again once you have allowed it to escape. So in order to dampen the rage I feel when I listen to Trump's exploitation of hatred on TV, I go to the very people whom he is vilifying and instead of hating him I try to fill my psyche with love for them. Doesn't work. It is easier to hate one man than to love an entire group - we can only feel real emotion towards the individual - we can wish to protect the maligned group - but love? that is harder - so I keep stumbling back to rage at Trump, who has so cruelly and wantonly destroyed my life's equilibrium and threatens my world.
If the polls are right he will be soundly defeated come November. But I also hope to defeat the disgust and contempt I feel for this man - one who has endangered not only the country we share but the families we love. For nothing good can flow from him - and so I find myself hating Trump for many reasons - his bigotry - his exploitation of the ignorant - his greed for money and power - but I think I hate him most for his making me hate him. Thank God the holidays that celebrate love come in December, and I hope they arrive with an antidote for Trump hatred. With any luck they will help to wash away the hatred that Trump has unleashed. But the truth is I don't just want him defeated - I want him humiliated - living in exile in his golden palace at Mar-a-glow or whatever they call that pile on pretension in Palm Beach - let it be this Napoleon's Elba, And let me go back to the business of exiling hate - while loving and enjoying the love of those who surround my life.