Bush-hatred -- the new new thing

A thoughtful email correspondent of mine confusingly named Michael, even though he is neither my father, Mickey, nor Michael Isikoff (who we are not, as we state in our header...), sent me links to a pair of point-counterpoint articles (nope, not the kind The Onion runs) at the Washington Post about Bush hatred:

Bush-Hatred: Fearful Loathing . . .
. . . Or a Rational Response?

Michael agrees with the "Fearful Loathing" article, which has the following concern about self-proclaimed Bush-haters:

If "hate" were used loosely (as in, say, "kids hate spinach"), the word choice would be harmless. But people who claim to hate really mean it, and that's serious. It signifies that you've gone beyond discussion, compromise or even (to some extent) coexistence. The differences are too basic to be bridged. Genuine political hatred is usually reserved for true tyrants, whose unspeakable acts of brutality justify nothing less.

More than the language is butchered. Once disagreement turns into self-proclaimed hate, it becomes blinding. You can see only one all-encompassing truth, which is your villain's deceit, stupidity, selfishness or evil. This was true of Clinton haters, and it's increasingly true of Bush haters.

Talking about an emotion like hate, though, is different from talking about ideas. In my earlier post about hating Bush, I quoted Jonathan Chait's Bush-hatred article to combat the accusation that Bush-hatred was a sign of irrationality. Chait argued that it was perfectly rational for some people to hate Bush. At the time, I agreed, but I see now that I fell prey to some logical error that I don't know enough about logical reasoning to name properly (anyone, anyone?). In fact, all emotions are essentially irrational to the extent that they are not governed by the intellect. But to admit that one has an irrational emotion is not to admit that one is, fundamentally, irrational. If that were the case, no one would be capable of rational debate, since we all experience emotions. (Yes, some people seem not to experience emotions as the rest of us do, but we don't ordinarily find that they function more rationally in the world than the rest of us. In fact, they usually appear irrational, since much of what we commonly think of as rational behavior is actually mediated by our emotions. And yes, I did just string together a bunch of ideas from popular science writers to make that argument, but I still think it's basically sound.)

Okay, back to Bush-hatred. It ain't rational, but it is understandable.

Hence, admitting to Bush-hatred does not automatically mean that "you've gone beyond discussion, compromise, or ... coexistence", nor is hate automatically blinding. Actually, I'd argue that those of us who can admit to the emotion and understand its sources have a better chance of coming to a reasonable accommodation with the hated than those of us who feel hate but do not acknowledge it.

So there's my response to those articles, Michael from Fairfax, and thanks for pointing them out to me. I hate Bush, but it doesn't mean I am incapable of appreciating his chocolate-chip cookies.