It is bewildering how so much visceral hate continues to exist in a country that millions of people consider a Christian nation. It bears repeating that the United States of America was not founded as a Christian nation. It was founded as a secular nation where individuals were allowed to believe or not believe in any religion and not have government at any level dictate what individuals should believe. In fact, the founding fathers had their fill of government dictated religious beliefs and that was one of the principal reasons for leaving their European home countries.
The term “visceral” is defined as: relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect. Much of the current hate being seen throughout the country is of a visceral nature because it does not stem from any intellectual understanding of the subject matter in question. We now have segments of the population, often overlapping, that hate LGBTQIA, minorities, intellectuals, liberals, the poor, and anything that is what these haters see as different than what they view themselves as representing.
For the latter half of the 20th century, the LGBTQIA community, currently comprising an estimated 7.1% of the U.S. population, made great strides being accepted by society for who they are as human beings. As the LGBTQIA community was being more accepted into society it was clear that a minority of the population, most notably conservative Christians, were upset with the progress. They began to strategize about turning back the clock when this small minority of the population was repudiated by society and hid, often known as closeted, as citizens of this country. There is a small segment of society that has shown a visceral hate for individuals of the LGBTQIA community, and that belief has often been used by unscrupulous politicians for political gain.
The hate of anyone that is not of Caucasian European descent was once a huge problem prior to the Civil Rights movement of the mid-20th century and is once again becoming, after a few decades of progress, a growing problem in the country. We now have politicians in various states revising history education books to exclude events that may offend some students, most notably to whitewash (yea used on purpose) how slavery and other minority events are described. Even going so far to focus, albeit ridiculously, on the benefits for the slaves of slavery. Once thought to be something to avoid, we now have politicians pontificating overt racist positions involving the minority non-white people residing in the U.S. This slide toward increased racism will not bode well for the future of a country where in a few decades non-white minorities will constitute more than half of the U.S. population.
A substantial number of people seem to hate poor people for being poor. They express all kinds of bogus reasons why the poor are poor yet fail to describe the more prominent reasons for the continuance of poverty in the richest nation on the planet. For several decades the U.S. has strategically settled on using low wages as an economic tool to increase the wealth of the shareholder and owner class. There was a concerted effort to eliminate unions because unions provided the working class with a modicum of power in the employee to employer dynamic.
It bears repeating, the purchasing power of minimum wage peaked in 1968 and has been in decline, with a few inadequate upward adjustments, since 1968. Had the purchasing power of minimum wage been maintained it would be around $13 per hour and most other wages would be higher. Overall higher wages would have had a dramatic positive effect on society from increased revenue for government, Social Security, and Medicare, making Social Security and Medicare possibly solvent forever. A country can have a low wage economic strategy but needs to have well-funded and expansive social services to counteract the low wages or provide higher wages and provide a lower level of social services, but it is very difficult to have a low wage economic strategy and underfunded and inadequate social services and expect the overall society to thrive.
There should be no place for visceral hate in a caring, just and compassionate society. The constitution describes promoting the general welfare and forming a perfect union as ideals that we the people are to aspire to during the evolution of our country. Not everything is about the second amendment which has been incorrectly interrupted for decades to fit a political and economic agenda. The continuation of fostering hate to further political ambition must stop. However, as much as we would like to place most of the blame on manipulative politicians, the voting public shares some of the blame for allowing themselves to be manipulated into hate, consuming their thought process when making a choice as to who will represent their interests in government. Currently, hate is winning the day and unless that changes the ability of this country to move society toward the ideals of the constitution will be unachievable.
