Hate is one of those words. A word that once you have said it your impulse is to amend it. Maybe, “well I don’t like it” or “on a scale of one to ten………..” Or, maybe you reflect and quietly edit your thoughts. And then words.
Historically, to make this easy, most of us have “hated” Hitler. In politics there are certainly extremes that deserve the harshest characterizations. But then the next object or subject of hate seems, well, not to be so hateful. If Hitler deserves hate, what does Taylor Swift deserve?
Recall, Trump on his social media site, Truth Social, said he hates Taylor Swift. Well to begin with it was a lousy political move, but then that is what many of his supporters like. He, the anti-politician, doesn’t back down. He doesn’t weigh consequences. He says what he means in the moment; hate is not simply a figure of speech. He is more like us. Hoorah!
But then he is not us. He has a giant mega-phone domestically and internationally and has decided to load it with explosives. Yet, he often runs for Miss Congeniality among our enemies. Trump and his sidekick, JD Vance, are engaged in a noxious version of verbal jujitsu. Although, in its simplest form, it is understandable. And the only reason it can be hard to understand is that typically “divide and conquer” is not the guiding strategy of a winning model.
It has been noted in past responses to my columns that “no, I don’t like Trump, but I like his policies.” Trump has one policy—winning. He is now, for example, making sure he is not outbid in promises to exempt certain labor income from taxation. One might ask whether a person who cares for the disabled should pay a higher tax on their income than someone who earns overtime pay? Trump has called for exempting tip and overtime income from taxation.
The question is where does this verbal jujitsu lead when it becomes THE policy. I can’t imagine a strategy of divide and conquer leading to a successful conclusion for the country. And I can’t imagine this strategy not leading to a Presidential Executive Order administration and the paralyzing litigation that is certain to follow.
The only successful approach to executive leadership in a democracy is to win over a majority that will support you and the Members of Congress you will need to both enact and then protect your policy priorities.
Donald Trump’s approach goes out of the way to win an electoral college vote, knowing that winning a majority of voters is not possible. Recall. He didn’t reach out to the opponents in the Republican Presidential Primaries who won a sizable number of votes. He regularly refers to all Republicans who do not not knell as “RINOS”. And he decided to take on the most popular celebrity, Taylor Swift. His valentine: “I hate Taylor Swift.” And to put a cherry on top of this licorice sundae, he choose JD Vance to be his running mate. Vance specializes in demonization with a snarl.
And again to those who say they “like his policies” he has shrunk the Republican Party including subtracting many of those who served in his Administration while abandoning the principles of cerebral and heroic conservatives alike. What would Edmund Burke call Trump’s concoction? What about Bill Buckley? Or Ronald Reagan?
As I close, let me return to the word “hate”. Hate can be understandable—we all have that emotion on occasion. While I don’t often use the word, if there was binary choice I hate, don’t love, licorice. But if it is understandable as our emotions scan various objects and subjects, if our only choices are to love or hate when it becomes a word defining our attempts at self-governance, it is destructive. It is self-defeating and more. In short, if America thrives when embracing our motto: “Out of Many One”, it deteriorates when our voting privilege is animated by hate. If voting is an investment do not put your hopes in hate.
My vote this year will be for Kamala Harris. And, Larry Hogan, who I believe represents the higher principles of true conservatism.
Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books.
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