"Hatred - Unifier, Divider and Destroyer"

 In an essay on hatred, it is perhaps unfair to lions to attach this photo. Nevertheless, I have done so. Lions may get angry, but I doubt that they hate. However, the expression on the lion’s face reminded me of extremists in Washington – politicians, news commentators and pod-casters. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Hatred – Unifier, Divider and Destroyer” 

April 26, 2026

 

“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life;

love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.”

                                                                                                                Martin Luther King (1929-1968)

                                                                                                                Strength to Love, 1963

 

Hatred has become pervasive. It has been around for decades but sprouted anew during the Obama Administration when ‘identity politics’ divided people into ‘oppressors’ and ‘oppressed.’  It accelerated with the hyperbole of President Trump’s postings on Truth Social. It has been fertilized by members of Congress like Chuck Schumer, Chris Murphy, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Marjory Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, encouraged by podcasters like Nikole Hannah-Jones and Nick Fuentes, and abetted by those from main-stream news like Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow.  

 

It is true that hatred can be unifying. Hatred for Hitler’s Nazis and Tojo’s Japanese military helped solidify Americans in their defense of democracy. In his 1962 travelogue, Travels with Charlie: In Search of America, John Steinbeck wrote: “‘I didn’t think that at all, sir, but I bet I’m going to. Why, I remember when people took everything out on Mr. Roosevelt. Andy Larson got red in the face about Roosevelt one time when his hens got the croup. Yes, sir,’ he said with growing enthusiasm, ‘those Russians got quite a load to carry. Man has a fight with his wife, he belts the Russians.’ Maybe everybody needs Russians. I’ll bet even in Russia they need Russians. Maybe they call it Americans.’” 

 

Steinbeck wrote this during the Cold War. Five years earlier, the Soviets had launched Sputnik1, marking the start of the Space Age. Dislike and distrust of the USSR served as a unifier, as something on which to place blame, something to hate. Most of us knew no Russians. Like Andy Larson, we didn’t hate individual Russians; we hated the Soviet system that denied the dignity that stems from personal freedom and the potential for reward that comes with free-market capitalism. The Soviets had put down the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, stomped out the Prague spring in 1968 and beat back Polish “Solidarity” in 1980. In the United States, even with vocal political differences, that hatred of the repressive Soviet system served as a social glue that bound our nation – and the democratic, freedom-loving West – against the totalitarianism of Communism. 

 

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, we lost that common enemy, but hatred did not disappear. Hatred provides a ready-made, intense sense of self and purpose. It has engulfed our politics, and it has become personal. It is most obvious today in “Trump Hatred Syndrome.” Certainly, Mr. Trump is an easy man to hate. He is vulgar, boastful and inconsiderate. Nevertheless, if a policy emanates from Mr. Trump, Democrats are against it, regardless of its value to the American people. His opponents stoop lower than him. Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, in an interview on CNN regarding Iran, spoke honestly about the dilemma he faces: “The problem is I really don’t want to see Bibi Netanyahu or Donald Trump politically strengthened by this war, because they are two awful human beings.” His brethren in the media industry are not that candid. Hatred is responsible for the rise in anti-Semitism, which has swept across Western Europe and the United States. Especially obnoxious is when anti-Zionism becomes an euphemism for anti-Semitism. 

 

While extremists, I am sure, represent a minority of the American people, this spread of hatred forces us to pick sides. Democrats claim to be on the side of the good guys – aiding the oppressed, the down-trodden, the poor, those unable to help themselves. But there is hypocrisy in their virtue-signaling. They have more money and spend more on elections – $4.5 billion in 2024 versus $3.5 billion by Republicans, according to Axios. They live in the nation’s wealthiest states – Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, California and Connecticut. In contrast and ironically, Republicans, “oppressors” according to Democrat pooh-bahs, live in the nation’s poorest states, states that lean Republican – Mississippi, West Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee. In the minds of those on the far-left, I am Simon Legree to their Little Eva.

 

Today, there are over 160 million registered voters in the United States. Yet fitting them neatly into two main parties is more difficult than the task given Sisyphus. It is one reason why the percentage of voters registered as either Democrat or Republican have declined over the past forty years, while those registered as Independents have increased. Nevertheless, extremists in both parties have seized control; so that the interests of the American people are subordinate to the interests of Party leaders. What would our first President think of the gerrymandering efforts in Virginia, North Caroline, Illinois and Florida? Or consider where I live – New England, home to 15.4 million people and about 11 million registered voters. Thirty-five percent are registered as Democrats; twenty-one percent as Republicans, and forty-four percent as Independents. Yet, of the twenty-one House seats, Democrats occupy them all. Of the twelve U.S. Senate seats, Democrats have eleven. Are our Representatives truly representative?

 

This spread of hatred threatens to destroy our country. In his Farewell Address (September 17, 1796), George Washington warned against political parties, that while they “...now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

 

With the notable exception of the Supreme Court, and despite Washington’s admonition, unprincipled men and women have found their way to Washington, as well as to many state capitals and large cities. Nevertheless, I believe that most public servants are still devoted to their jobs and work for the public good. Moderates comprise the majority of the military and even, I would guess, most federal employees. Many are in Congress. But the number of extremists is expanding. What is needed are civility and respect toward all people, tolerance for differing opinions, and humility regarding our own. 

 

An anonymous quote has pertinence: “We may fight against what is wrong (or what we believe to be wrong), but if we allow ourselves to hate that is to ensure our spiritual defeat and our likeness to what we hate.” It reminds me of counsel once offered me by my father: “Never argue with a fool, for a passer-by would be unable to tell who is the fool.” His words apply equally to one who spits out hatred. An eye for an eye does not solve problems.

"A Scandal in Königsberg," Christopher Clark - A Review

 Giving birth can be difficult, which is one reason why T.S. Eliot called April “the cruelest month.” It is the month when nature re-awakens and birds and animals emerge and give birth, breaking the comfort of winter’s dormancy. Among those that come out from hibernation are Connecticut’s Painted Turtles. The photo depicts a “bale” of turtles, sunning themselves to harden their shells and stacked for socialization.

 

This review has nothing to do with turtles . I just liked the photo, which I took a few days ago.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

A Scandal in Königsberg, Christopher Clark

April 18, 2026

 

“The tension between reason and faith, between philosophy and

revelation was one of the central themes of these years.”

                                                                                                Christopher Clark, A Scandal in Königsberg, 2025

 

Christopher Clark, the Regius Professor of History at Cambridge, is the author of The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War and Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947. While researching the latter, he came across the story of a little-known scandal that took place almost two hundred years ago in Königsberg, now the Russian city of Kaliningrad but then the capital of East Prussia.

 

In his introduction to this short (152 pages) history, he explains that the “scandal” spread through conflating news with rumor and facts with innuendos. “Resemblance, he writes, “to present-day persons and situations, though not intended, cannot be ruled out.” 

 

Johann Ebel (1784-1861) and Heinrich Diestel (1785-1854) were Lutheran pastors in early 19^th Century Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia. It was the home of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and the place from which Napoleon gathered his forces for the invasion of Russia in June 1812, and to which they returned, bedraggled and defeated six months later. Kant was a philosopher of the Enlightenment period, an elderly professor when Ebel and Diestel were students in Königsberg. The Enlightenment had introduced reason, science and critical inquiry: “The waning of ecclesiastical authority went hand in hand with an expansion of religious feeling. The consequence was a loss of certainty and a proliferation of possibilities.” The era saw the growth of individual liberty and natural rights. Cark writes that as a sensitive young student Ebel found it difficult to reconcile “...the rationalist teachings of his instructors with the warm positive belief he had grown up with at home.” A central theme of those late Enlightenment years was tension between reason and faith.

 

It was also a time when patriarchalism reigned, when intelligent, unhappy women, married to wealthy landowners and aristocrats, sought sympathy and ministration in religion. They found it with Ebel and Diestel. As the scandal unfolded, the two men were castigated as home-wreckers and disruptors of family harmony. Yet not a woman complained. In the end, after seven years, both men were exonerated, but their lives and their livelihoods had been destroyed. As Clark tells us, it was allegations of sex that “..gave wings to the scandal.” In his chapter titled “Closing Thoughts,” Clark writes: “The grotesques conjured up by the press (at the behest of the provincial authorities) were not images of what had actually transpired around Ebel and Diestel, but the fantastical inversions of liberal ideals.” 

 

While it may seem strange to recommend a book about a scandal that was largely contrived and in a city and country that no longer exist, Christopher Clark is too accomplished an historian and too good a writer to ignore. The book can be read as a history of a little-known Prussian city on the Baltic during an interesting time, when philosophy and religion were transitioning. Or it can be read as a parable for our times.

"Is Political Centrism Possible?"

 The cartoon I took from the internet, with the understanding we should be able to laugh at ourselves. Nevertheless, extremism is a serious concern. As Clint Eastwood, at age 94, said in a February 20, 2025 interview, “And when you go far enough to the right you meet the same idiots coming around from the left.” And I would suggest we have more than our share in Washington (and in many state capitals and large cities) today.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Is Political Centrism Possible?”

April 13, 2026

 

“The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground

exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. 

Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.”

                                                                                                                                Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

                                                                                                                                Skeptical Essays, 1928

 

“They told us they wanted a culture that could tolerate disagreement without treating it as heresy.”

                                                                                                                                Katherine Dee (c.1993-)

                                                                                                                                “Exit Strategy”

                                                                                                                                The Spectator World, March 30, 2026

 

In his 1920 poem, “The Second Coming,” William Butler Yeats included lines that have pertinence to our cultural and political lives today:

 

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,...

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.”

 

Recent polls conducted by Gallup and Pew Research suggest that the number of Americans identifying as political moderates has declined, from 43% in 1992 to 34% in 2024. Not surprisingly, Pew Research notes that far-left and far-right voters contribute more money, attend more political rallies, and have higher turnout rates at elections than their more moderate brethren. In both parties, social media users with moderate views are reluctant to post about political and cultural issues. In 1992, James Carville, strategist for Bill Clinton, coined the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid!” It helped Mr. Clinton win the election. In 2026, the phrase could be: “It’s the extremists, stupid!” In this environment it is fair to ask: Can the center hold?

 

Ironically, this is happening at a time when more Americans have been doing better financially than at any time in history. In a recent survey conducted by the American Enterprise Institute, reported on by Aimee Picchi of CBS six days ago, the “core” middle class no longer represents the largest group of Americans. Now, for the first time, that honor belongs to the upper-middle class. Yes, there are more people classified as “rich” – 3.7% in 2024, versus 0.3% in 1979 – but those categorized as “poor or near poor” have shrunk from 29.7% to 18.7%. Are things perfect? Of course not, but the trend is in the right direction.

 

Yet extremists continue to play to emotions. Extremism is not a new phenomenon that one can blame on Donald Trump and J.D. Vance or Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It has been gestating for years. In an article from last October, Johanna Dunaway of Syracuse University’s Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship, and who sees Americans as more divided today than at any time since the Civil War, wrote: “Much of the polarization that escalated in recent decades was largely driven by misperceptions people have about ordinary partisans on the other side – the everyday people in your neighborhood or office who happen to support the other party.”  She was writing of people like us, Nixon’s “silent majority,” or Trump’s “forgotten man and woman.” Social media has aggravated the situation. While instant communication has benefits, one of its drawbacks is that people react; they don’t think. 

 

Trump-hatred plays a role. Like Andrew Jackson who became President 197 years ago, Mr. Trump elicits emotional responses far in excess of any rational policy differences. Iran is a perfect example. For forty-seven years the Country has been a theocracy run by religious fanatics. Unlike Russia or China, whose governments forbid freedom but whose leaders are conscious of the risks of nuclear annihilation, Iran’s leaders would be unafraid of unleashing a nuclear holocaust, as they seek paths to Paradise, in shahada (martyrdom). Preventing Iran from getting the bomb was (and is) in the interest of all mankind. Yet Presidents from both parties have been ineffective in stopping them, that is until Mr. Trump. Now their nuclear capabilities have been curtailed and most of their ICBMs obliterated, thanks to the President and to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Yet Iran retains the ability to deprive the world of badly needed fossil fuels and fertilizers. The Strait of Hormuz lies in international waters. It is not a toll booth. It needs to be open for trade. 

 

Yet Democrats in the House and Senate will not support any initiative begun by President Trump, no matter whether to do so would be good for us and the free world. For example, listening to Senator Chuck Schumer belittle the President, one could easily conclude that he would prefer to see Mr. Trump humiliated than for the U.S. and Israel to defeat Iran and bring peace to the Middle East.

 

And mainstream media has been no better. Their biases, along with their sanctimonious idiocy, know no bounds. CNN anchor Dana Bash, sounding like Orwell’s O’Brien in 1984, recently said: “Objective reporting now, rightly so, means explaining what someone says when its false or when it’s not right or when it’s misleading.” I understand that Mr. Trump can be coarse and rude to both friend and foe. He is not the leader I would prefer, but no other President has taken on Iran’s leaders. He speaks to them in language they understand. The United States is stronger when its people are not torn apart by self-serving politicians and media-types, but the United States and the West will be safer with Iran neutered. 

 

While I cast more blame on Democrats for this state of affairs, populist politicians in both parties, along with their partisan media allies, play to their choirs, offend their political opponents, and leave the public to make sense of their lunacy. A Rachel Maddow or a Tucker Carlson has no interest in persuading the skeptic; their only interest is in playing to their partisan (and perverted) acolytes. 

 

And yet, most people I speak with are reasonable, despite the fact we have fundamental differences in terms of the role government should play. Most appreciate the beauty of our political system and understand why it has lasted so long – the sovereignty of the people, the three independent branches of government, and the rules of laws that are constructed by Congress through debate. 

 

Is political centrism possible? Perhaps, though it seems unlikely in the near term. Nevertheless, we should keep in mind the wisdom expressed by Dwight Eisenhower at a press conference on November 17, 1963: “The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.” The success of Artemis II is reason to celebrate a unified American. Can we at least do that?

"An Easter Anecdote"

 Today is Good Friday, or Holy Friday as it is called in many places, and Sunday will be Easter. I wish you the best for this holiday, as we celebrate Christianity’s most important day. (The photo is one I took from the internet.)

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“An Easter Anecdote”

April 3, 2026

 

“Let all the flowers wake to life;

Let all the songsters sing;

Let everything that lives on earth

Become a joyous thing.”

                                                                                                “Easter” c.1870, Fannie Isabelle Sherrick (c.1840 - ?)

 

While the United States is a religiously pluralistic nation – with the right of free exercise of one’s religious beliefs guaranteed by the 1^st Amendment of the Constitution – we are, still, predominantly a Christian nation. And Easter is Christianity’s most important holiday. On Easter we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, redemption, and the promise of eternal life.

 

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But it is also a day we associate with rabbits and Easter egg hunts. Rabbits, with their high reproduction rates, symbolize fertility. And eggs – unless boiled, fried or poached – are indicative of new life. German folklore provides a connection. The Ostern Hase (Easter Hare) was a mythical creature that judged whether children were good or bad. Tradition has it that the Easter Hare gave colorful eggs to the former.  

 

Most of us have childhood memories of Easter, of warm spring days, church services and Easter egg hunts. The latter was a fixture in my young life. Growing up on a small farm, with artist parents, we were outside every day. Easter came when the damp earth smelt sweet and trees began to bud. Snowdrops and daffodils, if not out, were about to enter stage left. Forsythia shrubs were not far behind.

 

Our family attended the Unitarian Church in Peterborough, New Hampshire. My mother generally gave us a nickel or dime to place in the collection basket. Once, the youngest, George, reached into the basket and grabbed a handful of coins, which promptly fell on the floor. Us older children then spent the next ten or fifteen minutes scouring the floor, picking up coins and replacing them, while the minister droned on. Following Easter service we adjourned for the highlight of the day – the Easter egg hunt. My mother had hidden eggs in a field that abutted the front yard. It was a field usually occupied by goats. 

 

Neighbors and friends would come. And as we were a large family – nine children when my parents had completed their spawning duties – there was a crowd. Eggs were abundant, for our Rhode Island Reds had been busy laying in a supply. Prizes were awarded for the most eggs and for the individual who discovered the “golden” egg. One time that sticks in my mind was when my father thought he had lost my sister Jenny. She had been born in 1948 and was about a year-and-a-half old. He became angry when we all laughed instead of searching for her. Finally, my mother, through tears of laughter, told him she was on his shoulder. He did not find the incident funny.

 

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While such memories are rewarding, we should not forget the real reason we celebrate Easter – the death and resurrection of Jesus, and Earth’s rebirth as spring surges ahead.

"In college, I drove a school bus"

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Gerard Baker had a beautifully expressed, memorable and oh-so-true line: “...relative extremism in pursuit of persuasion is all the rage...” Political extremism has been enhanced by media extremism.

 

However, onto a lighter theme, for life goes on; this essay has nothing to do with spring or April Fools’ Day, but celebrates grandchildren and memories. I hope you enjoy it.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“In College, I Drove A School Bus”

April 1, 2026

 

“Now I drive the school bus.”

                                                                                                              Otto Mann, school bus driver

                                                                                                              The Simpsons

 

In 2009 my youngest grandson, George, attended Christ Church Nursery School in Greenwich, Connecticut. A highlight was Grandparents Day, a way to celebrate the bond between students and their grandparents. On the day we attended each child was asked to introduce their grandparents. When it came George’s turn he was excited to introduce me as a school bus driver. I could not have been happier, knowing that he had listened to stories of my youth.

 

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George was correct. While I had spent the previous forty-two years as a stockbroker, I did drive a school bus between September 1963 and January 1965.

 

In high school and in my first two years of college I was an indifferent student, a cynic with no goals. My grandmother had paid my tuition at Williston Academy and at the University of New Hampshire. After two years I dropped out. I spent the summer working at Canada’s Falconbridge Nickel Mine, and later as a lab technician at the Metal Hydrides Corporation in Beverly, MA. Then, by a stroke of good fortune, on New Year’s Eve, I met the girl who would become my wife, and my life began to turn around. My cynicism dropped, and I had a goal, convincing Caroline (and her parents) that I would make a responsible husband.

 

I enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves to fulfill my military obligation and then returned to college for the spring term of 1963. However, given my past academic record, my grandmother would not pay my tuition; so I was on my own. While taking classes, I worked a number of jobs, making sandwiches and writing a sports column for the Dover Daily Democrat. That summer, while also continuing my studies, I secured a job driving a school bus for the city of Dover, NH. I kept the other jobs, but driving the school bus became my most consistent source of income. In April 1964, Caroline and I married, and I continued my school bus-driving duties.

 

Transporting students, I came to know the children, and we had fun, so long as they behaved and stayed seated. However, one episode remains fixed in my memory. It was a winter morning after a snowfall, which narrowed streets with cars parked on either side. I stopped at the top of a hill. The street went down to where a right or left turn could be made, but my route went up the other side. I sat for a minute or two, calculating whether there was room for the bus to navigate between cars that lined the street on the hill beyond. The children were in no doubt that the attempt should be made. After a few  minutes, I agreed.

 

The bus picked up speed going down, knowing it would be needed to crest the hill opposite. With children cheering, “You can do it! You can do it!” down we went and up the other side. Like taking a camel through the eye of a needle there could not have been more than an inch or two to spare on either side! We made it. 

 

I am grateful to George for his introduction of me that day. It brought back memories.