Hate

Sitting across from me at this very second is a girl which, to my dismay, I cannot stand.  Her very presence in the room annoys me and leaves me in sort of an odd fear that she might come talk to me.  Unfortunately, we share some of the same environments and can't avoid seeing one another.  This is not a relationship where we openly hate each other -- rather, we have to pretend to be nice.  Well, at least I'm pretending.

As humans, and the only creatures to possess compassion, our capacity to hate is astounding.  The largest global problems are founded on hate.  But there is a difference between the kind of hate that makes a person refuse to be served by a woman wearing a hijab and the petty kind of hate that stops us from fully enjoying life.  Ever since September 11, 2001, hate has been the dominant theme of relations between the United States and the Middle East.  The people of that region hate Americans, believeing that we want to eradicate their belief system and replace it with our own governmental and societal ideals.  This has been the battle cry for Islamic extremists for a decade now, and to some extent it is true.  If the Islamic belief system truly supports oppression and dictatorship, then yes, America wants to eradicate the threat this brings for American global security.  But I do not believe that most Muslims would support a dictatorship or genocide.  Never having read the Koran, I cannot say for certain that it endorses the killing of infidels, this being the accusation of many Christians.  But the people, that's a different story.  Radicalism and fundamentalism is dangerous today, and if it in any way threatens the United States, our government has the responsibility to respond to that threat to protect the people.  How far that goes in the world is uncertain and up for debate.  But even with all the hate and the suicide bombings being thrown in our face, we have no right to hate our own citizens or even other people of the world.  Without the retaliatory hate of the Americans, terrorists would lose some of their momentum.

So I'll smile and be nice.  I'll make small talk if it kills me.  Even though I can't stand her, and she does deserve to some degree my disdain, I cannot give it to her.  I cannot believe with our world in the state it is that two wrongs will ever, ever make anything right.