A Society Infected by Hatred

One moment will long be etched in my memory from the 1994 election campaigns. There was a man in jeans and a girl of around 8 on a sidewalk. The man took the child by her hand, kneeled and pointed to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, stepping from a car just a few feet away.

“Look,” he told the girl. “That’s what you don’t want to grow up to be like.”

A U.S. senator--an object of hate in this father’s eyes. And certainly no role model for his young daughter.

The white male, whose demeanor and dress denoted somebody struggling on a lower rung of the socioeconomic ladder, was among several score gun devotees protesting Feinstein’s successful push for a federal ban on assault weapons. Some carried signs reading, “All for gun control, raise your right hands”--with Hitler depicted in a Nazi salute.

This was last October in Chico, a Sacramento Valley community rooted in agriculture but now also a mixture of university liberalism, entrepreneurial conservatism, foothill individualism and kooks. A local abortion clinic had been firebombed the previous morning.

Feinstein’s aggressive advocacy of gun control certainly was fair game for public protest, especially during a reelection campaign. But the tone of hate in this man’s voice seemed to go far beyond mere objection to a public policy, even one that threatened his presumed sacred right to keep and bear any firearm he damned well please.

What sort of society are we becoming, I thought, when an impressionable little girl is admonished by her father that to grow up to be a United States senator--a member of “the greatest deliberative body in the world”--is akin to evil. This wasn’t just about Feinstein. It was also about the whole institution of government. And although this man, we trust, did not represent a majority of Americans, neither was he entirely an aberration.

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Hating the government, of course, is not a new phenomenon.

I also recall hundreds of anti-Vietnam War protesters outside a 1966 national governors’ conference in Los Angeles, shouting day after day, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many babies have you killed today?” In 1970, Gov. Ronald Reagan had to be protected by long lines of policemen in riot gear everywhere he went on a reelection kickoff tour. Later that year, angry demonstrators in San Jose pelted President Richard Nixon’s motorcade with rocks; one smashed a window where I sat on a press bus. These weren’t exactly our good old days.

But that particular hatred was aimed at one thing, debilitating U.S. involvement in some far-off civil war. Today’s hatred is generalized, complex and more pervasive.

For some zealots, it is focused on gun control. For many, it’s directed at perceived high taxes, oppressive government regulation, a lenient criminal justice system and welfare freeloaders. People are angry at illegal immigration, affirmative action and sorry schools.

Cynicism exploded with the Vietnam War, escalated during Watergate and now permeates society, fanned by--you name it--Nixon’s pardon, American hostages, Iran-Contra, “Read my lips” and Whitewater. From Sacramento, add political corruption. Mix in televangelist scandals, an L.A. riot, greedy millionaire ballplayers and the O.J. Simpson zoo.

Blended together, these are volatile ingredients for a frustrated nation spoiled by post-World War II boom times, but now engaged in fierce international competition to preserve its lifestyle, with declining disposable incomes and job security.

America also now lacks a unifying purpose, a common enemy. There’s no kaiser, no Hitler, no “Remember Pearl Harbor,” no “evil empire” behind the Berlin Wall.

But if you cannot hate the government in Moscow, there’s always one to hate in Washington.

Only 22% of Americans now trust Washington to mostly “do what is right,” down from 39% in 1990, according to an ABC/Washington Post poll. A 1994 Gallup survey showed that just 18% had confidence in Congress, down from 41% in 1986. A recent Harris poll found that only 46% expect their children to live a better life than they have, down from 59% in 1989.

Clearly, we are an antsy citizenry, many of us with hair-trigger nerves.

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So listen to hate radio, watch an ugly political ad, read some inflammatory material or sit through an inane violent movie and tell me the venom doesn’t infect society, that the torrent of poison doesn’t push some on the fringe over the edge. It defies logic.

If words and images weren’t powerful, businesses and politicians wouldn’t advertise.

We’re all living in that crowded theater where shouting “fire” can be calamitous, especially for the likes of a little girl in Chico.