"The GOP Doesn't Hate Women"

So says Ana Marie Cox, once Wonkette.  Let me agree. After all, I don't even know what "hate" is.

Hate exists without harm to the hated; harm exists with no hater.  Hate seems to be a hot thing - maybe some mix of desire and envy, resentment and insecurity, guilt and compulsion?

Expressed hate can be therapeutic, perhaps: I hope so anyhow, when I listen to I Don't Believe You or Idiot Wind. (I kiss goodbye, the howling wolf...) Others write great love songs; Dylan writes great hate songs.

The word is so fraught that it isn't useful, at least in political discourse.  And like any other claim of motivation it is unprovable. So I don't find it either convincing or useful to think that the Republican Party "hates" women, or Hispanics, or even gays. (And I'm not even convinced that hate aggregates from the individual to the group.)

In ecumenical spirit, then, let us agree that the GOP does not hate these people.  The GOP hurts them, whatever the motives of individual voters, candidates, and office-holders are.

The GOP does harm to women. It fights laws that make pay discrimination illegal. It fights access to contraception and abortion.  (This year the contraception piece has become clear - and the notion that this was about "life" rather than "freedom" has wilted.)  It eagerly embraces words like "slut" and "prostitute" to describe women who oppose their agenda.

The GOP does harm to gays. It opposes marriage equality, it opposes bullying laws. The GOP does harm to Hispanics, sometimes deadly harm, with its high-volume low-content campaign against immigrants.

The Poet, too long absent:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.