Why Am I So Hated?

Hate is too strong of a word I am sure. But I am sticking with it because that is the way it feels. And what other feeling does the remark, “I hope you get Covid and die,” elicit, from no less than two of my “life long friends”? Wouldn’t that be considered by most to be hateful words? Well, by today’s “woke” standards, it certainly would be hate speech.

I do feel hated. And hated by some of the people I love the most.

How did this come to be? I have always been a rather nice guy. I certainly have had my asshole moments. Typically, if someone doesn’t like me they say it is because I am arrogant. I do speak my own truth, which has made me appear as a shit disturber. I like to think of myself as a trickster instead, that seems more interesting to me than shit disturber. Whatever I may be, I am not evil. The worst situations I find myself I tend to raise my voice as my effort to be powerful. I do not step down well, and I push to make my point. But I never call anyone names, I certainly never do anything violent, or ugly, and I do tend to see opposing points with deep consideration and thought.

When all this Covid nonsense started up, I was stunned beyond comprehension how I was treated when voicing my views—which were in opposition to the mainstream narrative. First to go were FB friends. I had gathered quite a group from my Hollywood days. Most of them were not deep friends, but many friendly enough that I knew them pretty well and often hung out in groups, at recording session, etc.—a handful were actually rather close friends. Many also were from my school days in Cincinnati and Virginia. All gone. Well, a tiny handful remain, but 95% of them left. I have to say, I did not unfriend many myself, maybe 3 or 4 particularly caustic ones, but the remainder scrapped me. I remember getting into a tussle with two of these absconders. When I suggested that some time be taken away from the Covid insanity and spent on saving starving children, they both responded with, “Bye.” Really?

I was pretty easy going in the early days of Covid. I mean I certainly was argumentative, but I had no experience being personally attacked for having contrary viewpoints. I would state my position on the vaccines, for example, and within minutes I was accused of being a moron, a selfish bastard, and a science denier. What? How did that happen? My naive self walked into many traps and was blindsided by the hate and vitriol I experienced again and again. Unfriendings hit a frenzy.

And I have to say; I do not remember ever accusing any of these people of being a moron, a selfish bastard, or a science denier. I did start writing about the group that many of these people seemed to fit into, and called that group sheep. But I don’t recall ever calling anyone to their face a sheep. I also only used that word as a writing convenience, rather than calling the group “sheep-like” or “sheeple.” Sure, maybe it is insulting to a degree, but if the shoe fits, wear it. If you identify enough with that group to be offended by the description “sheep,” then you should think about it.

I remember being shocked by the ugliness these folks aimed directly at me. I just wanted to play, I wanted to debate, to see what other people were thinking and to share with them what I was thinking as well. I started to feel like I was a Nazi telling people that Jews and Gypsies didn’t deserve to live and that babies should be impaled and hoisted on poles and carried through the streets. It was a very odd feeling—to be on the side of the fence where most everyone on the other side were throwing insults and ugly accusations.

Then the vaccines came out and it got much worse. Before it was just about lockdowns, masks, social distancing and the like—big deal, yes, but not life and death (at least not immediate). When the vax came out, suddenly it was indeed about life and death. I didn’t want my loved ones, or anyone for that matter, to pump poison into their bodies. So I got a little louder. I wanted to save people, and even if I was wrong to see the vaccine as a death warrant, my heart certainly was in the right place. But no. I was still hated, even more so.

Then the bigger picture started to more obviously loom, the incident with the truckers in Canada, the “war on the unvaccinated,” the encouragement by the powers that be, to shun, ridicule, and shame all those in opposition of the obvious plan to dominate world power. And the “sheep types” all went along with it. All that we shrews were doing was trying to keep bad things from happening to people, all we were doing was trying to get people to think, to use common sense, to seek out information that was not part of the propaganda machine that was chewing us all to pieces.

But no, we were evil, we were morons, we were selfish, we were ugly, we were repulsive, we were science denying conspiracy theorist misinformation spreaders. We wanted everyone to die, to get sick, to perish. We hated everyone.

How strange.

After all of this I started to retreat inward to some degree. I stopped my rant to the sheep and focused on shrews. (I was hated, too, for calling innocent people “sheep,” them seeing that as the supreme insult of insults.) Preaching to the choir (as I am doing now) became my obsession. I had little interface with sheep, but when I did, they were particularly nasty. They all seem to be like Zombies now, so ready to take a chunk out of your hand if it is naively offered, always with the ferocious desire in their eyes to eat your brain.

I am walking the straight and narrow these days with most sheep (or, to avoid too much offence, the “sheep-like people”). I watch them and observe them, and are careful to pretend that I might be one of them. It has become my tolerance, my patience, and my respect and regard for these people close to me that has kept things from becoming caustic. I am willing to stay quiet and hold back when I know that they would have no problem throwing in my face how despicable anti-vaxxers are, how disgusting Trump and other hard right-wingers are, how ridiculous anyone who questions authority is. I am the one that has to avoid their wrath, avoid getting kicked out of my home, or losing touch entirely with other family members because my views are so repulsive—since when does caring about children’s health, personal freedoms of citizens of democratic societies, or the personal health rights of others, become such a detestable offence?

I have to constantly pretend I am the bad guy and thus keep my bad guy mouth shut. I apparently have no right to have the views that I have, and in order to keep this together, I must make every effort to keep quiet. It comes to a point where I begin to identify with the projection of “bad guy” I am receiving. I am starting to feel like a pedophile who is hiding out all of the time, terrified of revealing my inhuman evil nature and thus getting severely punished for it.

It is just wrong for people who claim they love us to not be tolerant of our views. And what is there to be tolerant of? We are good people. We believe in love, in health, in good government for the people and of the people. We believe in our inalienable God given rights. We believe in not hurting others. We even believe in apple pie and mom and dad and little Bobby playing in the street with other kids!

We are not bad people. So why are we treated as such? In fact, we are about as good as people get, yet in order to keep the relationships that mean something to us, we have to hide. We cannot be ourselves around the people who should know us best, and respect us, regard us, and love us for who we are and even for what we believe. At the very least, we should not be hated.