I read an article in our local newspaper, headlined “Stop the malicious, divisive hatred of Trump during this unprecedented pandemic.”¹ It’s here, if you want to read it. It will probably make you mad. If it doesn’t then most of the comments from readers will make you mad. It didn’t make me mad. It got me to thinking about some of my friends, some of my dearest friends, who have been overcome and controlled by blinding hate. They cannot think of the President of the United States without being immersed in a burning, seething rage. I have other friends whose rage centers not upon Trump but rather his predecessor. He’s out of office, but the hatred burns just as hot.

President Donald Trump is accompanied by Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, left, during a tour at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., on Tuesday, March 3, 2020. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

Sure, Trump actively pursued the fiction that it would all go away as the virus started to spread, because if it took hold it would hurt him politically. Sure, he locked the door on Chinese immigration, “after the burglar was already in the house.” (Remember though, how he was criticized as racist for doing that at all, rather than for doing it too late. Damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.) Sure, he said that he had no responsibility. Sure, he chose to blame China, the World Health Organization, the White House Pandemic Office after he dismantled it, the former President, and then later the governors, the medical establishment, and anybody else in sight. He does stuff like that, Haven’t you come to expect it? He’s a jackass. But hate? What good does that do? Who does it hurt? Weren’t you in church when they covered that?

Did you read that article, by the way, the one I mentioned at the top? Never mind, here’s the heart of it:

He may be suffering from narcissism and adult attention deficit disorder. But the nonstop, vicious, hatred of the president, during a time of national crisis, is simply wrong.

I am reminded of the “Not My President” people. Not your President. Who, then, is? Denial has consequences, almost invariably destructive. Hatred as a motivation works out badly for all desired outcomes except destruction. Destruction, in this case, of our system of government from the top down. You want to talk about blame? You want to lay it on Trump, that incompetent, bloviating, self-centered Toddler-in-Chief? Hate him for his incompetence and for what he is? If you satisfy yourself by doing that you’re stuck in a dead-end alley. Hating him won’t make things better. Here, more from the article:

Dr. Anthony Fauci and President George W. Bush, among others warned about it in 2005. Bill Gates gave a stern warning in 2015. Such an event would require massive stockpiles of protective gear, ventilators, and ICU beds. It would take years to accumulate this stuff. Yet despite the warnings, for decades no president, no congress, no governor, or mayor did much of anything at all to prepare for it. By the same token, the governing boards of our nation’s roughly 6,100 hospitals failed to prepare for it. It caught us all off-guard, but certainly not unaware of the distinct possibility of its arrival. There was no way that in a span of a month or two Trump, or anyone else, could have made up for those years of inaction.

In January, February and into early March Dr. Fauci and other experts were assuring us that the “the risk is low.” Trump believed him, and so did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who as late as February 24 was urging San Franciscans, to come to Chinatown and that “everything is fine here.” No one, not even Fauci, had a crystal ball.

Will it ever be possible for our tortured system of government to return to being functional? It must. Surely this aberration hasn’t made the ideals impossible: the ideals of a free people living in a democracy, working and living together, being productive in industry and congenial in leisure. It can never work if we are separated from each other by hate. Hate won’t fix it.

When I started writing in this space a few years ago my focus was on Eastern Europe, and Bulgaria in particular. Well, our topics have drifted through an epoch of change, and shifted inexorably back home. We’ve talked about refugees (a lot), and racism, the Greek economy, Crimea, Confederate statues, capitalism and democracy, and threw in some poems too. If you’re curious about Bulgaria though, I can tell you that they’re “past the peak” on the Covid thing. So is, famously with their near-eradication of it, New Zealand. (You can google “coronavirus statistics by country” and get a little interactive chart.) In terms of new cases per day, Taiwan is down to about zero, as is Japan. Hong Kong is pretty much over it, though heaven knows they’ve got enough other problems now.

What do these countries have in common? I think a big part of their success is that each one has a disciplined population. Here in the Land of the Free, people don’t line up quite so readily when the government starts barking orders. That Freedom thing, you know… it’s a conundrum. In the effort that it took to win World War II (as told in rose-colored retrospect) Americans pulled together in a way that we can’t imagine now. They worked together, toward a common goal.

Hate won’t move us in that direction, not one small step. Working for good, hatred has no value. None.