... Behind ALL OF THE HATE: We're Only In It For - THE MONEY!!! CAPITALISM - Get it before someone else does[will]. .

A brilliant description of what I like to call "The Traitor Class". For short term gain they are willing to sacrifice this country and all who live here. I wish someone would ask them if they had any ideas on how we can get out of Afghanistan, lower the unemployment rate, keep the banks and corporations from stealing us blind, feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, taking care of the widows and orphans (you know, “Jesus” stuff), regulating business enough so that they don’t continue to kill miners and oil workers and poison people who eat eggs and meat and spinach and lettuce and destroy the world we live in with industrial waste, provide a decent education for our children and a secure retirement for our elderly, provide health care for all Americans so they don’t have to DIE for lack of it? Oooh, that’s right, they HAVE NO IDEAS!! That’s why they spew the crap they do to divert the people from their REAL problems and their REAL enemies. The Traitor Class never sleeps!

Agree with wysiwig, "The Traitor Class never sleeps!" Powerful writing! +5 from doarte's MADHOUSE

Opinions other than our own ... must be crucified because some smug superiority insists … “I am Divinity’s sole light!” I didn't take that as a directive. If someone did, would you consider that to be an irony? Hmmmmm ...

I read this. I read it again. I wrote a response--somewhat incoherent--discarded it, and wrote another. I discarded it for its incoherence as well. Hate. The very thought of it muddles so much of what I need to say...not because I feel hatred within myself, as a valid expression of my thoughts and sentiments, but because I feel so much of it directed at me and those like me. Eh...this is no big deal: hatred is the sign of an inferior mind, contaminated with inferior thoughts, and for as annoying as such things can be, it's ultimately little more than...a nagging trifle that can be overcome with rationality and patience...massive loads of rationality and patience...HUGE, massive, gargantuan loads of rationality and patience...and, as you've just demonstrated: a healthy dollop of poetic perception. Hate is a knee-jerk reactionary thing; an unwieldy bull in a china shop that vomits rhetoric and dogmatic fervor like like a drunkard in a street gutter spewing in an equally crass, though more honest a way. It spews and spews, endlessly, challenging anything that simply hints at an alternative to dogma; it makes broad statements and calls them precise, it makes assumptions and calls them truth. It belittles you, even as you've mortally wounded it. Hate, from my long-term reception of it (ethnically, religiously, and in terms of heterosexist sentiment) is a thing I've learned to pity. I don't think there IS an antidote to hate. It is a human emotion, and human emotions are inherently valid by the very fact that they exist. Hatred, the most simplistic of these emotions serves a purpose, but this purpose has been muddled and confused, and twisted into something else...something that causes suffering in other human beings. THIS, I think is the truest problem--not hate in and of itself, but the manner in which hate is now directed at other people rather than at things that should be erradicated. Hatred of poverty is a thing no one will deny, nor should they. Hatred of injustice is noble in its meaning. Hatred of violence is a nice aspiration...and these are a few reasons as to WHY hatred even exists in the first place; it reminds us of what we must change, what we must fight against...and only through pure, absolute stupidity, have we turned so necessary an emotion into a weapon we use against others. I agree with wysiwig in the sentiment that we should ask the "Traitor Class" how to fix the problems they've caused. The only thing with the Traitor Class is that it's far bigger, far more invasive, complex, and subtle than we ever imagined. It's a dundering, stupid monstrosity that misinterprets its own existence. It is the starving mother who devours her own children. Mis-directed Hate is this starving mother's sister, feasting on innocence because its will to live has far surpassed its actual ability to live. Your poem touches on many diverse topics, all associated with Hate...it causes me to stop and consider Hatred and to name its offspring. I love it when writing does such things, when a reader is allowed to simply absorb, think, process, and if lucky, solve...thank you for this. I appreciate it greatly.

''our GRIM ANIMOSITIES toward difference: shades Of skin, opinions other than our own'' (jo_dis) @ jo_dis: HELLO. I 'LOVE' this section above. (WINK). ''I would address jo-dis here but I have come to recognize he has nothing to say" (wblack) @ wblack: HELLO. Methinks we ALL have 'something' to say. (SMILES). SOLUTIONS to HATE: (1) START off by NOT saying that someone/anyone else has 'nothing' to say. FINAL THOUGHT: "Opinions are like rectums. We ALL have ONE and EACH serves a purpose".

...why can't we all just....get along?

@ jo dis & Chipka Hate is not an issue, it is an emotion. An issue would be injustice. You see how that clarifies things. Emotions arise in all humans; they are what typify a normal healthy functioning human being. You could not purge hate without destroying humanity – this is true whether you speak of an individual or group. Hate for others has been used by various groups and entities through-out history, and the very first step in practicing the politics of hate is to create an arbitrary identity: in order to hate a group or individual you must first identify them as “Other,” as outside, as different. Some of those commenting here, by identifying a so-called “traitor-class,” are engaging in the politics of hate. Following in the tradition of the Nazi’s they then assign blame – not identify cause, or make a reasoned argument, they provide no proof, no evidence, they assign blame without the need to show why their reasoning is honest, true to fact, or just. In identifying a “traitor-class” they commit injustice. What is it when you falsely or wrongfully assign blame? It is an injustice. I rest my case. They have unmistakably identified themselves as foot soldiers in the Army of Hate. @ neles-e Capitalism is not behind “hate.” I don’t believe you know what capitalism is. “Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.” Rand says this: “The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice.” Rand goes on to say this: “The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual: everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort. Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival . . . . Since knowledge, thinking, and rational action are properties of the individual, since the choice to exercise his rational faculty or not depends on the individual, man’s survival requires that those who think be free of the interference of those who don’t. Since men are neither omniscient nor infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or to pursue their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgment. Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man’s mind.” Note: Freedom is fundamental in the practice of capitalism. Rand goes on to say this: “It is the basic, metaphysical fact of man’s nature—the connection between his survival and his use of reason—that capitalism recognizes and protects. In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions, and interests dictate. They can deal with one another only in terms of and by means of reason, i.e., by means of discussion, persuasion, and contractual agreement, by voluntary choice to mutual benefit. The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree that is crucial. It is the institution of private property that protects and implements the right to disagree—and thus keeps the road open to man’s most valuable attribute (valuable personally, socially, and objectively): the creative mind. It is . . . by reference to philosophy that the character of a social system has to be defined and evaluated. Corresponding to the four branches of philosophy, the four keystones of capitalism are: metaphysically, the requirements of man’s nature and survival—epistemologically, reason—ethically, individual rights, politically, freedom. Capitalism demands the best of every man—his rationality—and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him. His success depends on the objective value of his work and on the rationality of those who recognize that value. When men are free to trade, with reason and reality as their only arbiter, when no man may use physical force to extort the consent of another, it is the best product and the best judgment that win in every field of human endeavor, and raise the standard of living—and of thought—ever higher for all those who take part in mankind’s productive activity.” @ wysiwig How very Saul Alinsky of you. You pose an assertion – i.e. this “traitor-class” acts thoughtlessly for only short term gain. You fail to provide supporting argument, or any evidence, or reasoned thought, and end with a long list of non sequitur assertions which still do not support your assertions. (Non sequitur (Latin for "it does not follow" -- in case you do not understand the term), in formal logic, is an argument in which its conclusion does not follow from its premises. A laundry list of evils existing in the world do not support your assertion of a traitor class – it is you making the assertion, and the demanded burden of proof falls on you, and yet you cannot support your assertion other than by pointing to a million concerns without rhyme, reason, and most of all no sense or recognition that the roots of even a handful of these issues (let alone a single one) lie not in capitalism but rather in vastly diverse geophysical and historical factors of context and that none of these can be lumped together into one single category of context or cause. There is no single answer to your absurd compilation of horrors and you frankly must know that – this is your sole purpose: to obscure and confuse the possibility of rational response and discourse by pointing in all directions – you are guilty of doing the precise thing you fault these unidentified “traitors” for doing – but this is the core of the Alinsky methodology and your execution of his tactic: screaming incoherently, is flawless. I counter by asking, what is your solution? Not just to one, but to each individual issue, with full respect to context and cause and fact. What do you offer? If you cannot distinguish between one thing and another what is your purpose? As I see it you are merely content to posture and jeer while enjoying the benefits of civilization, in blind denial of your own selfish gains, while contributing nothing of value.

Don'cha just hate that...