Two-minute Hate

After a week in which a long fought-for dream was reduced to rubble in just eighty minutes you would imagine England rugby followers would hate the Irish team for their outstanding performance. But that’s not how rugby fans roll. The Irish were roundly applauded and the losing side – for so long seemingly unbeatable, despite some very beatable starts – picked up their Calcutta Cup, their second Six Nations trophy in a row, their world-record-equalling eighteen straight wins – and went off for their bollocking from Eddie Jones. It may be more than a game, but in the end it really is just a game; no place for hate.

Hatred is such an extreme reaction to events, don’t you think? It’s an immature, teenage lashing-out, often against those who have only their best interests at heart. ‘Oh, I hate that!’ they say, when they really mean ‘that’s inconvenient’. True hate is a slow-cooked build-up of repressed animus, marinated for years and slowly brought to the simmer by repeated slights and prolonged ill-treatment. Hate is also personal, visceral. Countries don’t hate each other; one may fear the other nation, or even despise it, but hate is a tricky thing to control and has no place in civilised discourse.

Also, if your first recourse to show your disaffection is to use the word hate, where do you go after that? Don’t you hate exaggeration? Just as with all the ‘literally shaking right now’ tweets following the most insignificant of slights, it’s akin to putting all your cards on the table immediately following the deal. I ‘literally’ hate you, so there is literally no point in trying to discuss things with me; I am so far beyond reason and I hate you for putting me in that position. Hate is like slamming the door and stomping out... you look so much more foolish when you then have to go back and ask nicely for your car keys.

But I suppose hate does allow you to quickly segue into accusations of Nazism and thereby identify with the legions of brainwashed adolescents who believe anybody in a position of authority over them is, literally, Hitler. I find the best way to deal with being called a fascist is to smile sweetly and suggest I have to rush off to barbecue some babies, or gas some Jews. What’s sauce for the goose; at least it saves me getting into complex arguments where you have to find some bizarre middle ground before ‘agreeing to disagree’, which is, of course, mealy-mouthed code for ‘you are still wrong and I will go on believing I have won’.

A ready cleaving to the notion of hate also opens the door to the acceptance of more hyped-up hyperbole to further your incisive discourse. Instead of accepting that Trump and Brexit and Le Pen and Wilders are natural reactions to years and years of concerted left-wing attempts to browbeat people into behaving against their conservative instincts, idiots like Tim Farron have to leap to wild conspiracy theories about some New World Order to explain to themselves how they lost.

Bad losers, whose ‘progressive’ world view has been shown to fail, instead of accepting this and getting on with it are fomenting unrest. People like Farron, possibly in the sincere belief that they are right – which makes them dumb as well as dangerous – are going about, stirring up antipathy, encouraging others to believe themselves victims and take up cudgels against those who genuinely want a world for the many, not for the few. Don’t you just hate that?

Mustn't Grumble

It doesn't take much, does it? Left - right, religion, sex, Europe, chavs, toffs, the NHS, HS2, sniffing too loud on the train and the colour of your socks. When did we all manage to get so angry so quickly? Where's the historical starting point for all this offence-taking? The manufacture, packaging, marketing and distribution of grievance seems to be the only industry booming today.

Back in what now looks like the golden age, the good old days, the twentieth century, our imperial stiff upper lip ensured we didn't whine ourselves into a froth. Our moans and groans were topped off with a sigh and a "mustn't grumble" and off we went to face reality, sure in the knowledge that if we came home with enough energy to watch the six o'clock news we'd had as good a day as could be expected.

We were famous for it. Fair play, a sense of place, a certain pride in a job done well, however lowly, and expectations of a life not necessarily exciting, but at least safe and certain (apart from all those diseases we used to have, obviously). Whenever something kicked off, like the miners' strike, we were happily polarised into for or against and we sat back to watch events unfold, putting up with the minor difficulties like no light or heat or power until everybody got back a sense of proportion and got back to work.

We had winners and losers, strivers and shirkers and it was very clear where you stood. If you were a decent sort, you got on with it, struggled through and came out nearer the top of the pile. If you were, you know, the other sort, well we just didn't mix with you and you got what was coming... which was not much. And on a Sunday we even went to church to pretend we were a god-fearing nation, equal under the almighty, although if truth be told there was little much else to do, except watch the afternoon films on telly.

Oh yes, we were happy in black and white. Norman Wisdom, Jimmy Edwards, Stanley Holloway... Mr Pastry. And then came along Technicolor to blight our days with its garish primary hues, its madcap hallucinogen of Doris Day and the American Dream. Damn you, John Wayne!

And then, once colour had been invented, the rot really set in. Sergeant Pepper's fucking what, already? If any of The Beatles were still alive today, why I'd, I'd... I'd better have a lie down for a bit. Where was I? Oh yes, The Beatles, that's where it all started to go wrong. All you need is love, my arse! How does that pay the rent? Anyway, the floodgates were open now and all of a sudden people got ideas above their station, like wanting to be happy all the time.

But actually, now I come to think of it, being happy isn't such a bad ambition, is it? So how did that morph into what we see today? I blame Diana, the Goddess of Versace, who sacrificed herself... blah, blah, blah... something to do with a Dodo...  so that we could be miserable for ever. I don't remember all the details, history not being a strong point, but I do remember it was in 1997 and I'm certain nothing else that happened that year could have caused all this strife.

The pursuit of happiness has brought us to where we are today. Now, instead of looking for the silver lining, we're all constantly alert for the jagged, baby-killing, razor-lined, bile-spitting storm clouds of offence. That's why Tony Blair introduced multiculturalism and diversity - so we'd ALL have something to hate. Even if we are comfortable and content we have at our immediate disposal the means to contort ourselves into a spitting ball of fury on somebody else's behalf, if not at their behest.

Line up of the usual suspects

Well I, for one, have had enough. From now on I'm going to look on the bright side. All will be sweetness and light. I will smile at children in the street, pat stray dogs and help old ladies across the road. I will skip and sing and shut my eyes tightly at signs of malcontent and never let another harsh word cross my lips. Love, love, love and joy and happiness and sweet-scented flowers I will bring... But where's the fun in that???