I’m going to tell a very unflattering story on myself.
A much younger version of Jim was working with a client in the client’s home office on a software issue. (I owned a software company for 20 years). Now, this guy was in the oil business, buying and selling it on the open market from the comfort of his own home. He was moving millions of dollars around with his computer every day from a room the size of a walk-in closet.
This day, his four-year-old daughter wandered into this cramped space and started using my leg for a punching bag. Totally immersed in fixing the software bug I was pursuing, my irritation with this distracting child broke through. I turned to the child and said, “I hate you.”
I don’t know if a four-year-old understood the meaning of the word hate (I hope she did not, because that would say something about my client that I don’t want to consider), or it was just the tone of my voice, but she immediately broke into hysterical sobbing. Which was not the expected reaction. I just wanted her to stop beating on me.
Now, for reasons that may seem obvious by my annoyed reaction to this child, we chose not to have children, and I’ve matured since then, so no future children were subjected to my verbal abuse. But I learned a very visceral lesson that day about the power of hate. While it worked, the little girl stopped beating on me, her pain wasn’t worth my gain.
If you want to understand American politics in 2025, don’t look for policy. Look for hate.
We’ve moved beyond disagreement. What used to be policy debates about taxes or foreign aid or education are now cultural battlegrounds soaked in rage. A significant segment of the American electorate has been conditioned to see their fellow citizens not as opponents, but as enemies. Political engagement isn’t about solving problems anymore, it’s about annihilating the other side. That’s not hyperbole. That’s the architecture of the political landscape as it now stands.
Hate has value, to those who seek power. And they’ve learned to cultivate it with terrifying precision.
This didn’t happen by accident. Hate is potent. It bypasses critical thought, floods the brain with adrenaline, and bonds people into tribes with an intoxicating sense of righteousness. In the hands of authoritarian leaders, hate becomes a tool, a shortcut to unity, loyalty, and blind obedience. It is easier to tell people who to fear and loathe than to explain how to fix what’s broken. Hate is efficient. Hate is profitable. Hate gets votes.
Donald Trump’s second administration has leaned into this strategy with both boots. We’re not seeing a platform of ideas. We’re seeing a campaign of enemies. Immigrants. The media. The “deep state.” College professors. LGBTQ+ communities. Protesters. Even judges. Every institution that could challenge his power is turned into a villain in a broader narrative of national decline and moral rot, decline always blamed on “them.”
This is not new in world history, but it is newly normalized in American life.
And the machinery that supports it, right-wing media ecosystems, fringe conspiracy platforms, and social media algorithms optimized for outrage, functions like a hate refinery. Every grievance, no matter how small or imagined, is stoked into a bonfire of indignation. A single act of vandalism by a protester becomes evidence of national collapse. A bureaucratic decision by a civil servant becomes proof of treason. A teacher’s lesson on systemic racism becomes an assault on white children. These aren’t organic responses. They are manufactured.
You don’t have to love a policy to follow it, but you do have to hate an enemy to fight for power. And that’s the point.
Under Trump’s leadership, we’re watching the lines between dissent and disloyalty blur. Dissenters aren’t just wrong. They’re dangerous. Un-American. They must be silenced, punished, or driven out. That’s not democracy. That’s authoritarianism in a baseball cap.
In this environment, compromise is betrayal. Moderation is weakness. Nuance is suspect. Anyone who tries to bridge divides or argue for shared truth is shouted down by louder, angrier voices convinced that every concession is surrender.
This is how republics fall.
Once hate becomes the primary political currency, the entire democratic system suffers. You don’t try to govern your opponents. You try to destroy them. Laws are rewritten not to protect rights but to punish enemies. Courts are stacked. Agencies are purged. Loyalty becomes the only virtue. Dissent becomes subversion.
And in the end, you get a state that looks less like a democracy and more like a cult of personality, propped up by fear and resentment.
Make no mistake: this isn’t just a Trump phenomenon. The Democratic Party, too, has dipped its toes in tribal resentment, though rarely with the same ferocity or strategic clarity. But the structural advantage lies with the right, where grievance is the brand. The right-wing movement has become the most effective hate machine in American political history, powered by a mythology of victimhood and vengeance. It does not seek a country of shared governance. It seeks a country purged of opposition.
And what’s most tragic is how effective it’s been.
People are afraid. Not of terrorists or foreign enemies, but of each other. We’ve reached a point where a neighbor’s yard sign or a bumper sticker can trigger rage or anxiety. Thanksgiving dinners are battlegrounds. School board meetings are war zones. Public servants are harassed, threatened, and doxxed. All because someone decided that the greatest political resource in America wasn’t hope or vision or even truth, it was hate.
So what do we do?
We start by calling it what it is. We stop pretending this is normal. We stop pretending this is sustainable. We stop telling ourselves that if we just wait it out, the fever will break. It won’t. Hate does not recede on its own. It must be confronted, defused, and rejected, culturally, politically, and morally.
It requires courage to stand up in an angry crowd and say “no.” No to scapegoating. No to dehumanization. No to the lies that tell us our neighbors are our enemies. It means defending institutions not because they’re perfect, but because they are the last line between civil society and collapse. It means refusing to be baited. Refusing to answer cruelty with cruelty. Refusing to see politics as a war.
And yes, it means organizing. Voting. Writing. Speaking. Even when it feels like shouting into the darkness.
Because the alternative is unthinkable.
We are not too far gone. But we are further than we should be.
And if we let hate keep writing the story of America, we will not like how it ends.
Disclaimer: Jim Powers writes Opinion Articles. Views expressed in this editorial are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Polk County Publishing Company or its affiliates. In the interest of transparency, I am politically Left Libertarian.
