Love Trumps Hate or Love Trump’s Hate

It's Not our Differences that Drive Conflict; It's our Sameness 😳

What the anthropologist, Rene Girard discovered (or uncovered) was how intertwined our desires are with the desires of our neighbor. And they with ours.

“If the model himself becomes more interested in the object that he designates to his imitator,” says Girard, “then he himself falls victim to his contagion. In fact, he imitates his own desires through the intermediary of the disciple. Thus, the disciple becomes model to his own model, and the model, reciprocally, becomes disciple of his own disciple.”(Girard: Things Hidden)

It’s the mirroring of desires that binds subject and model together. The point is as important to note as it is difficult to see:

It’s not our differences that drives our conflict; it’s our sameness.

Girard often called this phenomenon “doubling” though I like the phrase “the symmetry of antagonism.” Example: When people gathered to support Clinton in the events leading up to the 2016 election, and again, with Harris in the 2024 election it wasn’t uncommon to see signs reading, “Love Trumps Hate.”

The wordplay highlighted both that the Democratic party thought of themselves as the party of love and that they were not the party of Donald Trump. Interesting enough, as far as it goes, but there’s also a more profound way to view the sign, as in some cases, the people wielding the signs appeared to be anything other than loving.

Mimetic theory gives us a clue that they were revealing how similar they were in their attempt to differentiate themselves from their perception of Trump’s hate.

What’s more, the people carrying the signs may have actually loved Trump’s hate. This isn’t meant to offer definitive judgments about whether or not Donald Trump is hateful. I mean, I don’t think that’d be a difficult judgment to make, but that’s for another discussion. Rather, this is intended to demonstrate that some well-intentioned Democrats have become so energized by their perceptions of Trump that their collective identity has become wrapped up in the hating of “Trump’s hate.” Their identity was/is built over against or in relation to the other. And, of course, the Trump supporters were all too willing to mirror their opponents’ actions.

Girard, exegeting this kind of behavior, says:

“In rivalry, everyone occupies all the positions, one after another and then simultaneously, and there are no longer any distinct positions. Everything that one of the partners to violence experiences, thinks about, or carries into actions at a given moment, will sooner or later become observable in the other partner. In the last analysis, there is nothing that can be said of any one partner that must not be said about all partners without exception. There is no longer any way of differentiating the partners from one another.”(Girard: Things Hidden)

This symmetry of antagonism (btw, Chris Flemming’s term), is mediated in what Girard thought of as internal and external ways. If the model is distanced from the subject in a geographical, positional, or practical sense the mediation is labeled external. Revered spiritual leaders, historical figures, distant aunts, or social media influencers can play this role. There’s little danger of conflict as long as the subject and the model operate within different spheres of activity and outside the range of direct competition. But when proximity between subject and model decreases to the point that their existence intersects in meaningful ways, the doubling can turn rivalrous.

👉🏼This can give insight into why the sharpest conflict is often reserved for those to whom we are closest: our fellow countrymen, congregants in the same church, or members of the same family.

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I find Girardian insight helpful in understanding some of our political landscape, but I'm still left scratching my head. I have no interest in demonizing anyone (ha, no interest in loving Trump's hate), but last week's election was in a word: disappointing. I'm saddened for women, for Haitians, and for lots of people who I know that are themselves saddened, or to use their words, "traumatized." This is a painful time. 

Among other things, the pain has invited me to read, listen, and learn more about what in the expletive is going on in our culture. Whatever else we can say about the election, what seems very clear is that the left is woefully out of touch with the general public. To whatever degree I'm a part of the left is debatable, but if I am involved, what this means is … I might be woefully out of touch with the American public, too. This isn't good. Even more, this is unacceptable. So, I've been trying to learn, un-learn, and re-learn.

So, this past week, I've read several of Paul Kingsnorth's essays, which can be found at The Abbey of Misrule; I also read Ken Wilber's A Post-Truth World, Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice, and Jim Palmer's recent Substack publication. I also found the most recent Why Theory podcast episode to give me some insight. And of course, Thomas Jay Oord’s work with open and relational theology gives me the imagination to see that the election itself wasn’t ordained by God.

A few of these, and some other things I've been looking at, are outside of my normal reading, but I'm committed to widening my perception because, I do not think it will be productive to immediatly resort to "Screw Everybody! We're Fighting Now!!"

I get it, and I also understand that as a white, straight male, I’ve not experienced the intensity of the injustice in a way that a lot of my friends have, so you are welcome to disregard all this, but one problem with throwing punches is … I'm unsure we know exactly who we're supposed to be fighting.

I mean, it's fairly easy to locate all one's negative energy on the guy who got elected, but not only does that quickly turns into scapegoating, it ignores the reality that millions and millions of people voted for him. I believe in speaking out against injustice and standing up for what one believes, but blindly swinging at every other person who walks by is a recipe for disaster. 

Lastly, what this response demonstrates is the inability (or unwilliness) to see that I am never able to stand outside of my critique. The critique must always include me; my perceptions, actions, and energy. If I fail to remember this, then I'm doing what the other group is doing, and in such a case, well, this is the whole point of the first part of this publication ... it reveals how much I'm like my opponent(s), which, frankly, is not something I want. 😞

I don’t want to be about dysfunctional anger or my perception of such things, which is what we do when we add the apostrophe (i.e., Trump’s vs trumps). No, love is deeper than that … by faith, I believe that love trumps hate.

I’d be interested in any constructive input you might have and I’m breathing and praying peace over all of us.

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Speaking of resources, my friend Larry Jordan has a new book out called The Way: Meaningful Spirituality for a Modern World, a a 2024 Nautilus Book Award winner, which integrates religion and science and reconciles Eastern and Western worldviews, confirming with the mystics and the scientists that everyone is related, and everything is connected. I hope you’ll check it out.

Here’s a portion of the introduction …

This book is intended for general interest readers. It is a broad survey, not a deep study. My journey was a search for universal Truth, rather than the truth in a particular tradition, so I explored Eastern religions and Western religions, and I studied the mystics of many traditions and the luminaries of modern science.

The mystics seek experiential knowledge of God and metaphysics, just as the scientists seek experiential knowledge of the Universe and physics. Both the mystics and the scientists perceive a oneness or unity with God or the Universe, which can be difficult to reconcile with the Western religions, but easy to reconcile with the Eastern religions. Most Western religions are dualistic, and most Eastern religions are nondual.

In the West, many people believe that we are “apart from God,” and the notion of separation and otherness can be traced back to the creation accounts in the Bible. In the West, many people believe that God is “up there” and we are “down here,” that there was a cosmic rift between God and humans, and that Jesus was sent to reconcile this rift.

In the East, many people believe that we are “a part of God,” and the notion of oneness and unity can be traced back to the emphasis on wholeness, not holiness. Many people believe that God is in everyone and everything, that the True Self (or no-self in Buddhism) is one with the Universe, that the egoic self can obscure the True Self, and that we become enlightened when we realize the True Self.

This book is an honest reporting of my findings, not an impassioned promotion of my beliefs, and my intent is to ask interesting questions and discuss provocative perspectives, not to promote or refute a particular philosophy or theology. At times, it may appear that the book takes a critical look at Christian doctrine, but this is a focus only because I was raised in that tradition.

This book is called The Way, which is what most religions, including Christianity, were called before the priests and theologians displaced the mystics and sages. In Spanish, the word for “way” is camino, like the well-known Camino de Santiago or the less well-known Camino de Crestone, which I completed in 2017.

The Camino de Crestone is an inter-spiritual pilgrimage in Crestone, Colorado, where pilgrims visit spiritual centers representing many spiritual traditions. The pilgrims participate in discussions and experiences at each of the centers. The Way is a journey, as well as a destination, and all journeys are both experiential and intellectual.

The Way will describe what author Aldous Huxley and others called the “perennial philosophy,” which Huxley believed underlies all traditions. It assumes that there is a Godhead or ground behind the Universe, that this unity is immanent and transcendent, and that we can commune or merge with the Godhead or ground of being by transcending our egoic selves.