Real hate requires either psychological distance or inescapable intimacy. In the worst of all cases, it combines both. Here we are, all of us stuck in the same country, inescapably intimate with the fellow citizens of our shared republic. Here we are, all of us sorted into groups where we hold each other at arm’s length, naked with uninformed disgust. I’ve always found hate alarmingly easy to access, a physical experience that comes from inside us. Hate justifies violence and inspires violent action. Hate immediately divides people into the hater and the hated. Hate does not recognize
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