Hate. It is the ultimate four-letter word. Never mind all the ones we’re not supposed to say on TV, or in polite company or in the comments section of certain online forums.
None of them mean anything beyond their strict definitions. They’re just words. They’re considered “dirty” because some prude, somewhere in another era, deemed them so.
But hate. You can write that anywhere. There aren’t any built-in censorship devices that expunge the word from the public forum. And there are plenty of things to hate. You can hate broccoli. Hate the Yankees. Hate country music. Hate your next-door neighbor (but don’t forget to say Grace) and hate, albeit momentarily, the guy who cuts you off in traffic.
But we don’t really “hate” any of the above, do we? I’ll grudgingly eat broccoli, even if I don’t enjoy it as much as eating, say, a chocolate donut from Kane’s. I dislike the Yankees as an entity even if I can like some of their players. No, I do not like country music, but hearing the name Kenny Chesney, or seeing him, doesn’t put me into a murderous rage. I don’t have anything against any of my neighbors, and a good hand gesture takes care of the traffic situation.
What happened Saturday in Winthrop, when a man drove a hijacked truck into a house and then came out blasting, killing two innocent bystanders before the police shot him dead, is the type of thing that raises the word “hate” to a new level. And at the same time, it gives the word its true meaning.
People often say “hate” is an emotion. I would disagree. Hate is a decision. To reach the kind of hatred that boiled up inside Nathan Allen to make him do this? You don’t reach that point at the spur of the moment, no more than planning and executing a terrorist assault such as 9/11 is something that “just happens.”
Think about it. We’re not just talking about logistics here. Working up the type of hatred that would allow you to steal a truck, destroy a house and then murder two people has to take a lot of mental energy. In fact, to do something that heinous, it would have to consume you. Whatever outward vibe you gave off (apparently, Allen was educated and did not “look like” someone who would do this), this had to be all he thought about. What started out as a low spark somewhere inside him built and built and built until he exploded with hate.
Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins says that Allen’s double murder is a hate crime, because of all the people in the neighborhood who were scurrying for cover once he came out of his truck with his gun drawn, he picked two Black people to shoot — Ramona Cooper and David Green, one an Air Force staff sergeant and the other a retired state trooper.
Allen couldn’t have known enough about either to have considered that part of it, but Rollins is pretty confident that their skin color factored into his decision to shoot them, as opposed to the white people in the area. She’s also confident, based on writings of his, that Allen was a white supremacist and could have been targeting a nearby synagogue when he stole the truck.
This man, and thousands of people like him, have these thoughts. In the majority of cases, these thoughts may fester inside these haters but they’ll only be manifested in the comments section or on certain social media platforms where their safety from repercussions is assured.
But some, tragically, are so driven by their hatred that it spills over into these horrific events.
The extent to which people visibly, almost proudly, hate in this country is staggering and heartbreaking. And how much longer are we going to have to see examples of it before we realize what’s at stake? Whether it’s a gun, a knife, a bomb, a fire, or — apparently — a stolen vehicle with a crazed driver, there’s a common denominator. Hate.
It’s the only real four-letter word.