Hate is a bold word. As far back as I can remember, everyone and everything I’ve hated, I wanted dead. I spent hours thinking about how great it would feel to heat some Jiffy Pop, sit back in a recliner and watch people I hate hemorrhage slowly right in front of me: The cop who beat me up when I was 15 years old; my boss from an old summer job who knowingly exposed me to dangerous working conditions. Those two guys I would shoot in the face if I could pay a yearly $15 death maintenance fee and serve no jail time. That’s Brita-pure, Grade A hate. I have a difficult time treating general dislike or jealousy as hatred.
The irony of the word is none other than Generation X coined it, the same black sheep generation that remembers the dreaded equivalent of being a modern day “hater” from childhood, having the “cooties.” Cootie ostracism was real—it lasted for what felt like weeks before you passed them on to someone else. And being crowned “hater” is more than a nasty form of the cooties—it’s a schism that alienated the same people rap music was created to empower and it provided a diversion from addressing a greater set of issues. read more at www.medium.com
