To escape hate, turn off media and deal with others in love, kindness

By David McElroy · October 28, 2018

What we call the news has become “hate speech lite” for people who see themselves as too sophisticated to be guilty of hate.

There’s a lot of angst this weekend among good people who are full of rage about other people who were also full of rage and attacked or murdered some other people. A lot of decent people want to know what they can do to stem the tide of hatred that leads to violence.

Because they’re listening to news media — and to angry friends on social media — they’ve mostly accepted the narrative that the way to stop hate is to vote for Democrats in congressional elections. In reality, voting for anybody is just a way to keep the cycle of hatred going on and on and on.

The best thing you can do to fight evil is to turn off electronic media — to stop the alarmist hate you hear from almost everyone there — and to deal with the people around you in kindness and love. The answers you’re looking for won’t be found on cable news or social media.

If you listen to the news media, the source of hatred is whatever group opposes your ideological beliefs. For most of the media, the source of hatred is Donald Trump and any conservative or libertarian, because those people oppose their progressive agenda. For conservative media, the source of hatred is “the liberal Democrats,” especially certain hated figures on the progressive left.

As long as you are listening to media, you are hearing someone’s attempt to sell you on joining his crusade against a hated political enemy. You are being told that if the Democrats had power, hate would be defeated. (And if you watch Fox News or other conservative media, you are being told that Democrats are the source of all the hatred.)

But the truth about partisan politics is something you rarely hear. The battle between Democrats and Republicans (or whatever the groups call themselves in a different context) is over who gets to control everybody else.

Politics isn’t about “doing what’s right.” Politics is about which group gets to coercively impose its will on everybody else.

When Republicans take power, they pass rules which benefit them and their friends. They force everyone to pay for the things they want to do and allow freedom on the things they don’t care about.

When Democrats take power, they pass rules which benefit them and their friends. They force everyone to pay for the things they want to do and allow freedom on the things they don’t care about.

Do you see how much alike these groups are? They want to do different things, but they are identical in their willingness to use force to get you and others to obey them.

So if Democrats set the rules and force people to obey them, those who are being controlled are filled with rage. Periodically, a small minority of those people will eventually turn their hatred to violence. We’ve seen that long-term anger and resentment played out this week in the dysfunctional Florida man who mailed crude bombs to Democrats and news media.

If Republicans set the rules and force people to obey them, those who are being controlled are also filled with rage. Periodically, a small minority of them will eventually turn their hatred to violence. We saw a lot of that during the 1960s and early ’70s — and I suspect we’re heading toward a period of more of it today.

If you participate in this evil contest to decide who gets to control everybody else, you are contributing to the continued growth and spread of hatred.

The only way to break out of this cycle is to quit supporting either side in an evil war for control.

You cannot change everything by yourself. You can’t stop evil men from murdering Jews because they have internalized lies about this group. You can’t stop dysfunctional (and mentally ill) people from launching violent attacks on political enemies. Nothing you do can change that. You are doing nobody any good when you fill your mind with the garbage that is going on in the world.

The only thing you can do is to back away from this evil system and all the news about it — and focus on what you can control in your own world.

You can love people around you in the best ways you know how. You can be kind to the people you encounter. You can do a million things — voluntarily — to change the world right around you.

This doesn’t involve voting. This involves starting with your own mind and heart. It means taking your focus away from things you can’t control and focusing instead on your friends and family and neighbors.

As long as the vast majority of people support an evil system which controls everybody and turns one person against another, the sad truth is that you will be ruled by one group or another. You can either get mad at the Red Team (or the Blue Team) and you can try to install different rulers instead — or you can reject their evil system entirely.

If you reject their system, you can take your eyes off their quarrels. You can quit arguing about who has blame for what. You can stop believing the lie that your group being in charge will bring peace and love to your world.

You are the only person who can bring peace and love to your own world. It starts in your mind and heart. It’s reflected in how you treat the people around you — and it reflects itself in your being able to disconnect from the ongoing blame game about who is responsible for hatred.

Turn the political media off, not just the ones you disagree with, but all of them. Turn away from the arguments on social media. Focus on changing yourself and then on showing love and kindness to people around you.

This won’t stop the hatred that others are neck-deep in, but it will remove you from their cess pool. And if enough people make this voluntary change, we could change the world — not by forcing others to obey us, but by showing that people can choose to live in love and peace when they voluntarily choose to change their own hearts.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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