Ronnie Reagan died over the weekend. To give you some sort of clue as to how that event made me feel, my friends and I played a song in his honour after we read the news. The song was called "Lake of Fire" and it is a heartwarming little tale of going to Hell and suffering for all eternity.
Now that may seem rather spiteful in spirit. After all, we're talking about Ronnie! The harmless dope who made "Well, I uh...I don't recall" a catchphrase. The good-natured buffoon who bumbled his way through every episode of Spitting Image. Not only that but he'd spent the last 10 years watching his brain slowly going soggy thanks to the onset of Alzheimer’s disease (we'll draw a discreet veil over the fact that he almost certainly started to develop the illness in the last years of his Presidency; bearing in mind the Pope is another victim of dementia, yet is still allowed to issue edicts that affect Catholics worldwide, having a 'confused' US President seems almost reasonable). So why, bearing in mind that the death of another person isn't really something one should be celebrating, did my friends and I react with a little whoop of joy and "he's finally dead" sentiments?
Well, because the cuddly image of a genial old buffer who had made it his business to wipe out the menace of Communism to secure freedom for future generations is, to be blunt, a lie. Much eulogising has already been done about how Ronnie "oversaw the defeat of Communism"; He made a speech whilst President that described the USSR as 'an evil empire'. That speech has been reprinted as his finest moment. If we are to listen to the tributes that pour in, we'd think that ol' Ronnie was the last of the Cowboys; a brave and noble soul who fought the bad guys at high noon and sent them packing. But it's horseshit. Why? Well...
Firstly, because there was a lot more to the Ronnie Regime than the end of Communism. I actually don't really dispute that it was his presidency that saw the cracks in the Soviet Union become chasms. However, those cracks had been on their way for a while; the Soviet leadership had concentrated pretty much entirely on the Arms Race with the US, and so had neglected its infrastructure and agriculture. So one was left with a cluster of countries with top-notch weapons, but where food rotted uncollected in the fields. Unsurprisingly, this led to a certain amount of unhappiness. Mikhail Gorbachev capitalised on that feeling to start the dismantling of the Single Party State. In other words, it was already happening before Ronnie and his Movie Star Speeches. To give him credit for the end of Communism is like giving a father credit at the birth of a child; sure, he was there at the time. But in the long run he had very little to do with it.
Mainly however, it's the rank stench of hypocrisy (that gives off a pungent odour not unlike one of his Presidential nappies that were a feature of the last years of his life) that bothers me about him. Throughout his reign, he made speeches that had two fundamental pillars to them; that the USSR was an Empire and therefore evil, and that he was using his presidency to guarantee truth, justice, and the American way.
Let's deal with the latter first of all. To listen to Ronnie speak, you'd think that he was turning the US into the Superhero of the world. Under his auspices, poverty and hunger would be eliminated and everyone would be able to sleep soundly in their beds. But if that's the case, why did his policies include deliberate Genocide? No, I'm not making this up; that nice Mr. Reagan gave his approval to a policy that explicitly ordered the Genocide of the people of El Salvador and Nicaragua. Not all of them of course; no, only those troublesome left wing people. Because we don't want no dirty commies on our doorstep, no sirree (I think someone must have told him that Cuba had disappeared or something like that as it was pretty much left alone under a screen of sanctions). So he gave his authorisation for the CIA to train up some of the most brutal torturers in world history and let them loose on the peoples of other nations.
Now maybe I'm being naive (and after seeing how the US military and CIA treat their prisoners in Iraq, I almost certainly am), but encouraging mass murder doesn't really sound very All-American to me. Nor does propping up the various dictatorships in South America. Or arming and encouraging rebels in African states (or governments, depending whether the left or right wing were in power) to commit ever more savage acts of butchery in the name of 'defeating communism'. To me, it sounds like he was advocating and spreading terrorism to a far greater degree than the sandal wearing defectives in Al-Quaida. And, for the most part, he's gotten clean away with it; the American people saw little of this. All they knew was that the Soviet Union had fell, and they were getting some seriously good quality cocaine at low prices (didn't I mention that the right wing governments in South and Central America had no problem using drugs to get additional funds? And that the CIA were perhaps the biggest drug runners of them all?) so who cares if some little brown men get carved up in front of their families. Or if a bunch of street kids get kicked to death by police 'hit squads'.
Of course, now America is reaping what it has sown in terms of the terror it engendered throughout the world. And is it the likes of Reagan and his echelon of money whores who supported him that are suffering? Of course it isn't. It's the ordinary people of America who are having their freedoms curtailed, being told to be afraid of anyone different, and (if you're poor enough) being pretty much forced into the army to serve in the 3rd Brigade (Cannon Fodder Division) in Iraq or Afghanistan. In the meantime, an equally unpleasant and even more astonishingly hypocritical President continues the work of spreading terror (Dubya said his favourite philosopher was Jesus; at which point in the Bible exactly did Jesus say "And lo, thou shalt launch a pre-emptive strike on thine enemies"?) and thus pretty much guarantee that the good people of America will be the most hated and fearful folks in the world. It seems to me that Americans shouldn't be mourning this man; they should be cursing him for leaving them a world of hate, fear, and terror. Good ol' Ronnie gave America the world it lives in today. But hey, who cares? He got rid of the evil empire.
A closing note about the end of the USSR; which Imperial power has now replaced the Soviets? Well, the US maintains military bases in roughly 100 different countries. Iraq is being turned into a client state where the 'sovereign' Iraqi government will have to keep the large number of US and UK troops in the country. Afghanistan is being discarded now that it's been invaded. It seems we have a new Evil Empire, with a chimpanzee as their Emperor. Thanks Ronnie; this is your legacy.
Tuesday 8 June 2004
Monday 7 June 2004
Won't someone please think of the children?
I can't stand our national obsession with forcing people into the unwanted position of role model, then criticising them for failing to live up to it.
We in the UK have a defining national characteristic that confuses the hell out of me. It's something that we're all aware of and that we all partake in, and I can't decide if it means that we're an embittered nation, or that we simply refuse to respect those whom we are assured are our betters. I'm referring to our great national pastime of building up our heroes before knocking them right back down again.
Oddly it was the Beckham 'scandal' about his allegedly naughty behavior with his PA, Rebecca Loos that got me thinking about this. Once I'd calmed down from my standard "we're living in a world run by a powerful and greedy elite who are making war without any consideration for how it affects ordinary people, yet we're content to let ourselves be diverted by THIS sloppy panda poo of a story?!" position that I always take about frivolous news items (a position which, although I still agree with, sort of indicates just how much I needed to lighten up), I actually started to feel rather sorry for Goldenballs.
I should qualify that; the man has basically consented to be used as a market brand and, although it's making him obscene amounts of cash, it's making his sponsors and advertisers rather more. He's handed over his life to the public domain, and if you live by the sword you die by the sword when it comes to publicity and selling yourself via the media. However, even with all that in mind I was more than a little sympathetic towards him. Why? Well, because the main tone taken by tabloid journalists was that Beckham had let down the people (mainly the children) who idolise and look up to him.
Now maybe this is just me, but how exactly did he let anyone down? By rutting with a bisexual nymphomaniac with a filthy mind and highly developed bedroom skills? Who did he let down by doing that, because surely that's a class above emptying himself up a talentless, vain, bulimic babyprovider with a face like Dutch elm disease. As near as I can tell, he was being criticised for setting a bad example to the precious children of the world. Apparently "millions of kids look up to Beckham; what kind of lesson does it teach them when their hero cheats on his wife?" (although one could say he's teaching them not to marry a Prada-bedecked ghost train skeleton).
So then; that's the answer to the soaring divorce rate in the UK. It's all the fault of David Beckham. Glad we've got that one cleared up. I confidently expect to find that, if he puts on a few pounds, he'll be to blame for the rise in obesity in children. Doubtless Labour’ll soon blame him for increasing voter apathy in elections. Maybe we'll see him cited as the reason for domestic violence next (of course, if he does take it into his head to batter his wife into a bloody smear on the wall, he'd almost certainly get a knighthood).
This is, of course, complete and utter camelbollocks. I don't deny that Beckham is an idol to millions, but to say that his actions will be reflected by his legion of admirers is rather like saying that we're a society so devoid of individuality and ideas that we're content to try and turn our children into clones of anodyne, soulless clones of supposedly perfect people. Unfortunately, it seems that that's exactly what this society is doing.
What do I mean by that? Well, firstly I want to look at how we view heroes in the first place. This little scandal seemed to me to say that if someone is a hero to millions, then those millions should try and emulate that person exactly. They should give up any vestiges of their own personality and identity in order to try and become their hero (and alas, with the number of brainbubblingly poor girlbands that make up the pop industry these days, anyone who knows their way around a football pitch will probably consider a member of Liberty X as their birthright). Then the same tabloids that criticise Beckham for having "let down his fans" run a story about the "evil freak" that is stalking Britney/Xtina/{Insert name of Pop Tart here}.
Even leaving aside the standard media hypocrisy of encouraging people to worship celebrities whilst demonising those whose lives are so empty that they stalk the object of their obsessions, it seems to me that we've got our treatment of heroes all wrong. Yes, a hero is someone to look up to and emulate. But a hero is not someone whom we should expect absolute perfection in every conceivable way from; they're simply someone who sets an example to us to live our life in a particular way. OUR life, not a bland Xeroxed copy of the hero's life. So, for example, my biggest hero in life is Bill Hicks and I try to emulate him in key areas of my life. However, I don't share his philosophy on relationships for example. Nor do I allow my adulation of him to dictate exactly what my opinions are; unlike him, I don't believe that a UFO will come down and rescue me from planet earth to educate and enlighten me about our place in the cosmos (by the way, Hicks did an extraordinary amount of hallucinogens which I think sort of explains his UFO beliefs...).
What my hero-worship of Hicks amounts to is that I'm compelled to speak my mind, tell the truth, and stand up for my beliefs. Beckham is a footballer, so why should anyone’s adulation of him go beyond "I want to be a good footballer"? Why in the name of Mary's minge should he be a role model for the perfect family life? He's a multi millionaire; who can reasonably expect to have a family life involving shopping trips to Milan, villas in 5 countries, and a disposable income so vast that looks like it should be stated as a physics? No-one is criticising him for setting a bad example by giving people false hope of impossible dreams, so why criticise him for something done by depressingly large numbers of people anyway?
Well, because we'll criticise anything and anyone if it means we don't have to acknowledge that the society in which we live has some major flaws in it. Don't want to acknowledge our hypocrisy in marketing youth and young women as being sexually attractive whilst jumping up and down in a frenzied rage about paedophiles? (Of which the finest example has to be the Daily Mail running an article on 15-year-old Charlotte Church having a nice ass, whilst on the opposite page an article about protecting our kids from Paedogeddon screamed out at us) Simple; just blame pornography. Upset that house prices are rising and wages are still low? Then blame immigrants. Don't fancy acknowledging that the failure of the model of an ideal family is losing relevance in the modern western world? No problem, just blame celebrities and say that their infidelity is bringing down western civilisation.
If we want our oh-so-valuable children to grow up to be good footballers, Beckham is as good a role model as any. If we want them to be angry and paranoid middle class white men, Bill Hicks is your chap. If we want them to grow up to be faithful to their partners, tolerant of differences in others, determined, hard working, compassionate, brave, and decent then maybe we should look at ourselves and start closer to home. After all, we can't blame celebrities for everything. However amusing it is to do so.
We in the UK have a defining national characteristic that confuses the hell out of me. It's something that we're all aware of and that we all partake in, and I can't decide if it means that we're an embittered nation, or that we simply refuse to respect those whom we are assured are our betters. I'm referring to our great national pastime of building up our heroes before knocking them right back down again.
Oddly it was the Beckham 'scandal' about his allegedly naughty behavior with his PA, Rebecca Loos that got me thinking about this. Once I'd calmed down from my standard "we're living in a world run by a powerful and greedy elite who are making war without any consideration for how it affects ordinary people, yet we're content to let ourselves be diverted by THIS sloppy panda poo of a story?!" position that I always take about frivolous news items (a position which, although I still agree with, sort of indicates just how much I needed to lighten up), I actually started to feel rather sorry for Goldenballs.
I should qualify that; the man has basically consented to be used as a market brand and, although it's making him obscene amounts of cash, it's making his sponsors and advertisers rather more. He's handed over his life to the public domain, and if you live by the sword you die by the sword when it comes to publicity and selling yourself via the media. However, even with all that in mind I was more than a little sympathetic towards him. Why? Well, because the main tone taken by tabloid journalists was that Beckham had let down the people (mainly the children) who idolise and look up to him.
Now maybe this is just me, but how exactly did he let anyone down? By rutting with a bisexual nymphomaniac with a filthy mind and highly developed bedroom skills? Who did he let down by doing that, because surely that's a class above emptying himself up a talentless, vain, bulimic babyprovider with a face like Dutch elm disease. As near as I can tell, he was being criticised for setting a bad example to the precious children of the world. Apparently "millions of kids look up to Beckham; what kind of lesson does it teach them when their hero cheats on his wife?" (although one could say he's teaching them not to marry a Prada-bedecked ghost train skeleton).
So then; that's the answer to the soaring divorce rate in the UK. It's all the fault of David Beckham. Glad we've got that one cleared up. I confidently expect to find that, if he puts on a few pounds, he'll be to blame for the rise in obesity in children. Doubtless Labour’ll soon blame him for increasing voter apathy in elections. Maybe we'll see him cited as the reason for domestic violence next (of course, if he does take it into his head to batter his wife into a bloody smear on the wall, he'd almost certainly get a knighthood).
This is, of course, complete and utter camelbollocks. I don't deny that Beckham is an idol to millions, but to say that his actions will be reflected by his legion of admirers is rather like saying that we're a society so devoid of individuality and ideas that we're content to try and turn our children into clones of anodyne, soulless clones of supposedly perfect people. Unfortunately, it seems that that's exactly what this society is doing.
What do I mean by that? Well, firstly I want to look at how we view heroes in the first place. This little scandal seemed to me to say that if someone is a hero to millions, then those millions should try and emulate that person exactly. They should give up any vestiges of their own personality and identity in order to try and become their hero (and alas, with the number of brainbubblingly poor girlbands that make up the pop industry these days, anyone who knows their way around a football pitch will probably consider a member of Liberty X as their birthright). Then the same tabloids that criticise Beckham for having "let down his fans" run a story about the "evil freak" that is stalking Britney/Xtina/{Insert name of Pop Tart here}.
Even leaving aside the standard media hypocrisy of encouraging people to worship celebrities whilst demonising those whose lives are so empty that they stalk the object of their obsessions, it seems to me that we've got our treatment of heroes all wrong. Yes, a hero is someone to look up to and emulate. But a hero is not someone whom we should expect absolute perfection in every conceivable way from; they're simply someone who sets an example to us to live our life in a particular way. OUR life, not a bland Xeroxed copy of the hero's life. So, for example, my biggest hero in life is Bill Hicks and I try to emulate him in key areas of my life. However, I don't share his philosophy on relationships for example. Nor do I allow my adulation of him to dictate exactly what my opinions are; unlike him, I don't believe that a UFO will come down and rescue me from planet earth to educate and enlighten me about our place in the cosmos (by the way, Hicks did an extraordinary amount of hallucinogens which I think sort of explains his UFO beliefs...).
What my hero-worship of Hicks amounts to is that I'm compelled to speak my mind, tell the truth, and stand up for my beliefs. Beckham is a footballer, so why should anyone’s adulation of him go beyond "I want to be a good footballer"? Why in the name of Mary's minge should he be a role model for the perfect family life? He's a multi millionaire; who can reasonably expect to have a family life involving shopping trips to Milan, villas in 5 countries, and a disposable income so vast that looks like it should be stated as a physics? No-one is criticising him for setting a bad example by giving people false hope of impossible dreams, so why criticise him for something done by depressingly large numbers of people anyway?
Well, because we'll criticise anything and anyone if it means we don't have to acknowledge that the society in which we live has some major flaws in it. Don't want to acknowledge our hypocrisy in marketing youth and young women as being sexually attractive whilst jumping up and down in a frenzied rage about paedophiles? (Of which the finest example has to be the Daily Mail running an article on 15-year-old Charlotte Church having a nice ass, whilst on the opposite page an article about protecting our kids from Paedogeddon screamed out at us) Simple; just blame pornography. Upset that house prices are rising and wages are still low? Then blame immigrants. Don't fancy acknowledging that the failure of the model of an ideal family is losing relevance in the modern western world? No problem, just blame celebrities and say that their infidelity is bringing down western civilisation.
If we want our oh-so-valuable children to grow up to be good footballers, Beckham is as good a role model as any. If we want them to be angry and paranoid middle class white men, Bill Hicks is your chap. If we want them to grow up to be faithful to their partners, tolerant of differences in others, determined, hard working, compassionate, brave, and decent then maybe we should look at ourselves and start closer to home. After all, we can't blame celebrities for everything. However amusing it is to do so.
Wednesday 2 June 2004
How to Hate
Good moods always seem to lead to ruminations on bad things with me. Christ knows why. Whatever it is, it's doubtless Freudian.
It's been a while since I sat down to vent my spleen into one of these rants. A new lady in my life has meant that I'm full to bursting with the milk of human kindness; I'm so obscenely in love that most of my friends are convinced that they're seeing the first stages of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. And so, my mind being the fun-packed, "Glass half full" thing that it is, it seems entirely appropriate that I spend a little time considering the nature of hate. Because, y'know, I'm Iike that.
Hate is rather an odd emotion. We will frequently hear the old wives saying that it is nothing more than the flip side of the coin to love. We may also be informed that to hate someone, you must have loved him or her first. But is there anything to back up these sayings? And regardless of whether there is or is not, is hate always the negative thing that we think it is? Or are there any circumstances where hate is acceptable? Or even desirable? And what exactly defines hatred anyway?
So is hate just love in reverse gear? Well, to a certain extent I think it is. If one is in love with someone, then one is willing to do anything at all for that person (although it seems that anal is not included in that criteria, and God knows I've tried...) to the extent that one will put ones own hopes and desires on the backburner in the name of doing whatever it is your loved one desires. If one hates someone then one is equally willing to do anything at all to hurt or damage that person in some way, to the point of ruining one's own life if it means causing pain to the object of your hate. Love and Hate are two very extreme emotions, and the actions they inspire are equally as extreme.
But the thing is, how can we tell if we hate someone? I'm sure you've talked to friends who have agonised over whether they really love a particular partner. Maybe you've done so yourself. Yet we don't seem to have any difficulty in knowing whom we hate. You'll hear the phrase "I hate him/her" FAR more often than you will "I love him/her". Does that mean that we're an emotionally bankrupt bunch of hatemongers? Or are we confusing Hate with mere Dislike?
In an unusually optimistic move, I'm going to say it's the latter and I'm going to do so for a reason of personal bias. Despite being a worryingly good example of a bilious and generally vitriolic chap, I can count on one finger the number of people that I truly hate. On the other hand, I'd need more digits that the decimal value of Pi to count the number of people and things that I dislike (and did I really just make a maths joke?). Whilst we all seem to recognise the value of Love and are sparing in committing to just who and what we do love, the distinction between fiery hatred and lukewarm dislike is much less distinct in our heads.
It's worth diverting our attention for a moment to consider something else; does hate just apply to individuals? It's seems entirely possible to hate a group of people, or an organisation (as that happy-go-lucky cluster of ignorance known as the BNP proves rather well). Is this the same as the Hate one may have for an individual? Hating a group of people is, without any exceptions, an example of unthinking, blind hatred. However, as one can be unthinkingly and blindly in love with someone, this doesn't really work as a distinction.
However, you rarely (if ever; I know I can't think of an example of this) hear of someone being in love with a group of people (despite what some unfaithful partners might protest!). So if we agree that Hate and Love are opposites, we cannot define this group hatred as being Hate in the truest sense. It could be an educated and considered dislike (something only appropriate for hatred of organisations, e.g. an animal lovers hatred of vivisectionists, a Labour activists hatred of the Tories, everyone's hatred of Manchester United, etc), or it could be an empty headed loathing of a racial group (anti-Semitism, the Gunmen who attacked foreigners in Saudi over the weekend, and xenophobic hatred of asylum seekers being the best examples here).
So then; we can perhaps accept that Love and Hate are indeed opposite sides of the same coin. So does that mean that one has to have loved someone to hate then? Absolutely not; if we accept this logic than that would mean that it's only possible to truly love someone if you've hated him or her first, and that is ludicrous. It is of course possible to hate someone whom you've previously loved, and vice versa (the chap who is the object of my hatred is a former friend for example) but it's not exactly compulsory.
Just as love is, to an extent, indefinable then so is hate; you may find yourself thinking that the person or people in your life whom you love have 'a certain something' about them that you love, as well as all the doubtless huge number of more concrete reasons for your warm feelings toward them. By exactly the same token, although we may have good reason to hate the object of our ire, there will almost certainly be 'a certain something' about them that makes you want to smash them in the face with a shovel. These two different types of 'something' are completely independent of each other, and so there is no reason to suppose that we must have one to have the other (though I do accept that perhaps you have to have experienced one to fully appreciate the other).
So having looked at what Hate is and it's relative relation with Love, can we find any circumstances where it is a positive thing? To be blunt, no. If one is, as per my earlier definition of hate, willing to destroy ones own life just to hurt someone, then this is surely not a good thing. I've even found myself working on trying to downgrade my venomous loathing of the lucky chap that I hate to some sort of simmering discontent on the basis that I don't want to ruin my life over that cockwasp. Both Love and Hate are selfish emotions, but whilst an expression of love is designed to make someone else happy as well as making yourself feel good, that selfishness is entirely forgivable. Hate has no such get out clause.
I can, however, see circumstances where the hatred of organisations could be seen as positive (and I'd best tread carefully here; can we all assume that I believe any form of racism is a particularly awful thing so as to forestall the cries of "You're a fascist!"? We can? Jolly good...). Some types of group hatred stem from the following assumption;
"This group is trying to destroy something good. I do not want it destroyed, and will fight to protect it".
I would contend that this type of hatred is a good thing in theory, if not always in practice. If someone hates injustice, then one is naturally inclined to try and fight it. We can accept that as a good thing. That said, I suppose whether or not you consider it a good thing will depend on your own views and outlook; I hate the current US Government for their blatant greed in launching the land grab in Iraq. Others would disagree, and say that they hate the defeatist and appeasing attitude of people opposed to a war that was fully justified. But then, the world would be a boring place if we all had the same opinions, and some of the most interesting discussions I've ever had have been with people who's hatreds are diametrically opposed to mine. I don't hate these people, and I'm pretty sure they don't hate me. The trouble with this form of hatred only arises when we confuse it with hatred of an individual whose beliefs differ to yours. When that happens, we're back to being unpleasant bigots and that is the kind of thinking that I never want to be guilty of.
And that, in a long and rambling nutshell, is what I think of hate. I shall now return to being a doe-eyed and gooey lump of blissed out happiness and think loving and lustful thoughts about the wonderful lady in my life. If that sentence doesn't make you all hate me, nothing will.
It's been a while since I sat down to vent my spleen into one of these rants. A new lady in my life has meant that I'm full to bursting with the milk of human kindness; I'm so obscenely in love that most of my friends are convinced that they're seeing the first stages of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. And so, my mind being the fun-packed, "Glass half full" thing that it is, it seems entirely appropriate that I spend a little time considering the nature of hate. Because, y'know, I'm Iike that.
Hate is rather an odd emotion. We will frequently hear the old wives saying that it is nothing more than the flip side of the coin to love. We may also be informed that to hate someone, you must have loved him or her first. But is there anything to back up these sayings? And regardless of whether there is or is not, is hate always the negative thing that we think it is? Or are there any circumstances where hate is acceptable? Or even desirable? And what exactly defines hatred anyway?
So is hate just love in reverse gear? Well, to a certain extent I think it is. If one is in love with someone, then one is willing to do anything at all for that person (although it seems that anal is not included in that criteria, and God knows I've tried...) to the extent that one will put ones own hopes and desires on the backburner in the name of doing whatever it is your loved one desires. If one hates someone then one is equally willing to do anything at all to hurt or damage that person in some way, to the point of ruining one's own life if it means causing pain to the object of your hate. Love and Hate are two very extreme emotions, and the actions they inspire are equally as extreme.
But the thing is, how can we tell if we hate someone? I'm sure you've talked to friends who have agonised over whether they really love a particular partner. Maybe you've done so yourself. Yet we don't seem to have any difficulty in knowing whom we hate. You'll hear the phrase "I hate him/her" FAR more often than you will "I love him/her". Does that mean that we're an emotionally bankrupt bunch of hatemongers? Or are we confusing Hate with mere Dislike?
In an unusually optimistic move, I'm going to say it's the latter and I'm going to do so for a reason of personal bias. Despite being a worryingly good example of a bilious and generally vitriolic chap, I can count on one finger the number of people that I truly hate. On the other hand, I'd need more digits that the decimal value of Pi to count the number of people and things that I dislike (and did I really just make a maths joke?). Whilst we all seem to recognise the value of Love and are sparing in committing to just who and what we do love, the distinction between fiery hatred and lukewarm dislike is much less distinct in our heads.
It's worth diverting our attention for a moment to consider something else; does hate just apply to individuals? It's seems entirely possible to hate a group of people, or an organisation (as that happy-go-lucky cluster of ignorance known as the BNP proves rather well). Is this the same as the Hate one may have for an individual? Hating a group of people is, without any exceptions, an example of unthinking, blind hatred. However, as one can be unthinkingly and blindly in love with someone, this doesn't really work as a distinction.
However, you rarely (if ever; I know I can't think of an example of this) hear of someone being in love with a group of people (despite what some unfaithful partners might protest!). So if we agree that Hate and Love are opposites, we cannot define this group hatred as being Hate in the truest sense. It could be an educated and considered dislike (something only appropriate for hatred of organisations, e.g. an animal lovers hatred of vivisectionists, a Labour activists hatred of the Tories, everyone's hatred of Manchester United, etc), or it could be an empty headed loathing of a racial group (anti-Semitism, the Gunmen who attacked foreigners in Saudi over the weekend, and xenophobic hatred of asylum seekers being the best examples here).
So then; we can perhaps accept that Love and Hate are indeed opposite sides of the same coin. So does that mean that one has to have loved someone to hate then? Absolutely not; if we accept this logic than that would mean that it's only possible to truly love someone if you've hated him or her first, and that is ludicrous. It is of course possible to hate someone whom you've previously loved, and vice versa (the chap who is the object of my hatred is a former friend for example) but it's not exactly compulsory.
Just as love is, to an extent, indefinable then so is hate; you may find yourself thinking that the person or people in your life whom you love have 'a certain something' about them that you love, as well as all the doubtless huge number of more concrete reasons for your warm feelings toward them. By exactly the same token, although we may have good reason to hate the object of our ire, there will almost certainly be 'a certain something' about them that makes you want to smash them in the face with a shovel. These two different types of 'something' are completely independent of each other, and so there is no reason to suppose that we must have one to have the other (though I do accept that perhaps you have to have experienced one to fully appreciate the other).
So having looked at what Hate is and it's relative relation with Love, can we find any circumstances where it is a positive thing? To be blunt, no. If one is, as per my earlier definition of hate, willing to destroy ones own life just to hurt someone, then this is surely not a good thing. I've even found myself working on trying to downgrade my venomous loathing of the lucky chap that I hate to some sort of simmering discontent on the basis that I don't want to ruin my life over that cockwasp. Both Love and Hate are selfish emotions, but whilst an expression of love is designed to make someone else happy as well as making yourself feel good, that selfishness is entirely forgivable. Hate has no such get out clause.
I can, however, see circumstances where the hatred of organisations could be seen as positive (and I'd best tread carefully here; can we all assume that I believe any form of racism is a particularly awful thing so as to forestall the cries of "You're a fascist!"? We can? Jolly good...). Some types of group hatred stem from the following assumption;
"This group is trying to destroy something good. I do not want it destroyed, and will fight to protect it".
I would contend that this type of hatred is a good thing in theory, if not always in practice. If someone hates injustice, then one is naturally inclined to try and fight it. We can accept that as a good thing. That said, I suppose whether or not you consider it a good thing will depend on your own views and outlook; I hate the current US Government for their blatant greed in launching the land grab in Iraq. Others would disagree, and say that they hate the defeatist and appeasing attitude of people opposed to a war that was fully justified. But then, the world would be a boring place if we all had the same opinions, and some of the most interesting discussions I've ever had have been with people who's hatreds are diametrically opposed to mine. I don't hate these people, and I'm pretty sure they don't hate me. The trouble with this form of hatred only arises when we confuse it with hatred of an individual whose beliefs differ to yours. When that happens, we're back to being unpleasant bigots and that is the kind of thinking that I never want to be guilty of.
And that, in a long and rambling nutshell, is what I think of hate. I shall now return to being a doe-eyed and gooey lump of blissed out happiness and think loving and lustful thoughts about the wonderful lady in my life. If that sentence doesn't make you all hate me, nothing will.
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