If there's one thing I hate more than this awful weather, it's having to pay homage to someone -- especially someone most people would consider ridiculous. Insane, even. But, much as I'd like to steal his idea and call it my own original thesis, I can't. Whether this is out of some sense of intellectual honesty on my part, or whether it's just out of fear of getting caught, I do not know.

Might there be another reason -- a reason aside from intellectual honesty or fear of getting caught? While I can't penetrate the inner recesses of my unconcious conscience, I think the reason might be that I don't want to take the blame alone. If I can say that someone else cooked up what will sound like a crazy idea, I'll be largely blameless and off the hook. Better yet, this is a satire blog, which means that no matter how serious the ideas I float might be, I can always act all hurt and flustered if anyone is offended, and say, "Hey it's just a satire blog! Sorry if you were offended. I wish more people had a sense of humor!" (Yes, I'm supposed to pretend to care about being offensive, because that emanates from the penumbra of politeness. Truth is, as is the case with so many things, if you pretend you care long enough, you'll end up caring about the things you once pretended to care about! Trust me; it's called "developing a habit.")

That's a lot of background for what I think is a painfully simple thesis. But it's been bugging me for months, and I think it's high time I wrote about it, because the topics I've been writing about lately make little sense without understanding the human emotional needs which drive them. Amanda Marcotte, while seeming to be a player on the immoral side of the war between the immoral and the bigoted, is so openly bigoted that she is actually a convergence of the immoral and the bigoted. It's as if she's a sort of yin/yang creature, God bless her dirty heart!

Should I love her? Or should I hate her?

My unoriginal thesis is that we -- all people (not just Americans) -- are in love with hate. We need to hate. The more this hatred is repressed and suppressed, the more dishonest and unhappy we become.

Before I go any further, let me pay homage to the one and only original prophet of the love of hate, the legendary "Berkeley Hate Man":

Yes, he was a street person, before they came up with the "homeless" nonsense. He used to run around (often wearing a tattered dress) screaming his simple but profound slogan at total strangers,

"I HATE YOU!"

Whether he's still around I don't know, but the Berkeley Hate Man was very bright, and rumored to have been well educated and once successful (here described as Mark Hawthorne, a former NYT reporter), and if you took the time to talk to him, he would patiently explain that people were living in a state of denial which they could only get over by admitting their hatred. Nothing would make this man happier than to have his "converts" walk up to him and angrily scream "I HATE YOU!" right in his face. This would make him beam radiantly, and of course he would immediately scream "I HATE YOU!" right back. It was like instant dose of the 70s touchy-feely "I'm OK, you're OK" nonsense, except instead of feeling dishonest, you'd get a genuinely warm feeling.

The reason I had to pay homage to him is that over the years I have seen his admittedly simplistic theory coming back to haunt me time and time again. It's no accident that this great man -- a prophet, really (if I'm allowed to be that generous) -- would arise in Berkeley, where the world's most hateful people congregate, surround themselves with fellow haters, and lay plans to rule the world in the name of "peace" and "love." (And above all, opposition to "hate.")

It used to be OK to hate people -- especially strangers who were weird and people who aren't like you and the people you love. Love of "the other" used to be a Sunday church sort of thing, and in church most Americans used to get scolded for their hate. It was once a week, and it was endurable, but as more and more people gave up the weekly church scoldings, there was no way to purge the hate from their systems. It was love love all the time, without a religious component. You can't just press a magical "erase hate" button and make it go away though, because hatred is a human need.

Even in homogeneous cultures like Japan, which had no natural "other" to hate, they had to find one, so they decided that people whose ancestors once worked with leather were untouchable, and hated them.

Because there is a need for hate, if it is discovered and stamped out in one place (by those who hate hate, natch), it will simply spring up somewhere else. America has had a succession of hated groups, and as each one has been added to the List of Groups Which May Not Be Hated, the search for a new one to fill the ecological niche begins anew. So many have called homosexuals "the last permissible target" that I don't think extended comment on this is necessary. It wasn't that long ago that there was another permissible target group -- Arabs and people from the Mideast. Hollywood could get away with ridiculing them in stereotypes, but after 9/11 this became taboo. Of course, there's always the angry white heterosexual man, but it's getting harder and harder to portray him, say, as fat, short, mentally ill, or stupid. (Why? Because that might be "hateful" dummy! These days, villains ideally should be married, white-collar, law-abiding, and church-going. Hey, I don't make the rules, I just hate them. So much I love to break them, OK?)

Anyway, this came up because the more I thought about my proposal of an immoral and biogted alliance, the more I worried about the terrible consequences this might have for hate.

I mean, think about this: if we all need hate, and if hate fills an ecological niche, what I am idly proposing in this blog is that we do away with one of the biggest primary sources of core hatred in the country. And no I don't mean homos! This is much more profound than that. The war between the immoral and the bigoted is the driving force in politics, and it has been for years. (Ask Monica and Hillary for starters.) If these two groups would laugh about their hatred, what would happen to the country? As it is, liberals and conservatives can still hate each other quite freely, and that's as it should be. If we permit them to say "I HATE YOU!" and then just laugh it off, the consequences might be disastrous.

So maybe I should just forget about all this and let people have their phony love.

After all, I wouldn't want to be caught hating hypocrisy, now would I?

Worst of all, if you follow this "hate" thing to it's logical conclusion, it becomes disgustingly schmaltzy and sentimental. Like this sickening line:

if everyone in the world did the hate thing, wow would we have a great planet

Sounds almost as bad as love.