The downside to selling hatred as a MAGA commodity

I used to be a Republican. Right out of college, I worked for the legislature, then governor, of a conservative state. Governor Robert Orr, R-Ind.,  was disciplined and kind and his ethics were beyond reproach. Fast forward three decades and time spent among different cultures. After seeing trickle-down up close, and how it benefits wealthy donors but few others, my perspective changed. When I ran for Congress in 2020, it was as a Democrat. 

There’s a wide chasm between policy disagreements and hate, and although my viewpoint evolved over the years, I never hated conservatives. Indiana Republicans, back then, saw political disagreements as healthy conduits to better outcomes. I never heard Orr, or other Republican officials, express hatred for their opponents. They sometimes disparaged them, especially over plans that would leach money from their own pockets, but I never once heard the word "hate," even behind closed doors.

Enter Donald Trump and JD Vance, who package and sell hatred as a national commodity. 

Hatred hurts its host most of all

Trump’s belief that he can foment hatred and infect half the country with it— without falling victim himself—reflects a lack of emotional intelligence.

From the beginning, Trump’s hate-filled rhetoric has been spiked with violence. Reciting a list is like shoveling the walk while it’s still snowing, but last week’s second Trump assassination attempt in as many months sparks a flashback. Trump offered to pay the legal bills of anyone who assaulted his hecklers; suggested peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square be shot; mused that “Second Amendment people” could take out Hillary Clinton; encouraged a violent mob who sought to hang Mike Pence, now calls them “patriots” and “hostages;” and laughed about the vicious hammer attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s elderly husband. Now we have bomb threats in hospitals and elementary schools in Springfield, Ohio after he and Vance falsely claimed that lawful immigrants there are eating their neighbors’ pets. 

From "stand back and stand by" to complimenting "very fine people on both sides" of a Nazi demonstration, Trump’s coded vitriol against judges, prosecutors, poll workers, critics, democrats and his own former staff has led to multiple death threats, and yet he persists.

Trump habitually projects his own criminal impulses onto his opponents, so it’s not a leap that he’s now blaming Democrats’ rhetoric for the assassination attempts. It is apparently irrelevant that both would-be assassins were Republicans with mental health problems: Crooks was a registered Republican; Routh voted for Trump in 2016 then supported Ramaswamy in the last primary. Both had guns, while Trump himself revoked mental health checks for gun owners.

Vance, who is young, has said that Republicans are “hating the right people,” as if hatred is a finite and targeted commodity. How old will he be when he learns that once hatred takes hold, it can’t be contained, directed or controlled? 

Hatred triggers the addiction center of the brain

Hatred becomes a powerful addiction, and Trump’s followers are hooked. Hatred affects dopamine receptor binding such that addiction to hatred is as strong as an addiction to cocaine, except it’s more destructive. A shared addiction to hatred forms a strong social bond because listening to someone spew hatred triggers the same gratifying chemical hit, whereas watching someone else snort cocaine does not. 

Extreme hatred also creates motivational bias, which means adherents can only see evidence that supports their beliefs. At the addictive stage, they are blind to any information that challenges their narrative. That’s why reasoning with a hate-infected person won’t work.  

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

When it comes to juicing neurochemical hits in the brain, the target of hatred doesn’t matter. It’s hatred itself that’s addictive, as our brain pays more attention to negative than positive thoughts as an evolutionary, flight or fight response. Hatred operates in the same parts of the brain, the cortex and subcortex, that manage aggression; the path between political hatred and political violence is obvious. When wielded as a political tool, hatred of “other” has re-shaped continents. 

In encouraging hatred for legal immigrants, trans people, racial minorities, gays, women and anyone else they can “other,” Trump and Vance know exactly what they are doing. When asked about the bomb threats in Springfield Ohio, Trump doubled down. “I don’t know what happened with the bomb threats. I know that it’s been taken over by illegal migrants and that’s a terrible thing … now they’re going through hell.” He left off that he and Vance created that hell.

Drawing from Zen Buddhism, Eckhart Tolle teaches that angry and violent people are addicted to their thoughts. They hear them on repeat, over and over, and can’t shut them off. Hatred and negativity are so consuming, they look for others to infect. Hatred, like all untreated addictions, consumes its host in the end. Until then, the addicted part of the country will keep marching toward rock bottom, from where, eventually, they will begin the ascent back toward sanity.