Thanks Meredith. I'm writing some angry stuff on Substack and it is healing. It is not seeking revenge but some process I have to go through after all the BS of Covid. I look forward to my next song which is a spiritual I'm calling Close My Eyes.
I still think I will keep agitating for change but not with too much resentment.
Yes Meredith, we are at a very precarious juncture. Revenge is actionable hate, and hate is the poison we drink hoping the other person's dies. After my awakening, I had to step out of hate to find peace in my heart not thru forgiveness, but thru detachment. I no longer have any emotional ties to those that I have wronged me. My wish is simply to have the perpetrators removed from society, to stop the persecution of others.
At this stage of my life, I find hopium, the other side of the disempowerment coin, more concerning amongst my fellow freedom fighters. The landslide election of Trump, and his series of appointments, some I'll acknowledge being very encouraging, has led many to live in hope that the savior on a white horse has arrived, lowering their guard. I don't share this enthusiasm, on the contrary, I am redoubling my preparation efforts
.To me, considering his crew and rhetoric, I feel that Trump is leading us, alongside Israel, straight into WW3, the zionist trap. Furthermore I cannot see how his revengeful ways, his seemingly full frontal assault on the bankers, big Pharma, big ag, main stream media, the intelligence and the military complexes, will go unpunished. Will they lay down their arms and abandon their nefarious agenda after centuries of success? I don't think so. In any case, from the little I know, there is nothing anyone can do to stop the complete collapse of the economy and the closing of the banks.
May these events be a catalyst for preparing to live in a world without money in the bank, food in the grocery store, gas at the pump and juice at the electrical outlet. Be well and may God protect you. Thank you for your courage and inspiration.
20While I was speaking, praying, confessing my sin and that of my people Israel, and presenting my petition before the LORD my God concerning His holy mountain— 21while I was still praying, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice. 22He instructed me and spoke with me, saying: “O Daniel, I have come now to give you insight and understanding. 23At the beginning of your petitions, an answer went out, and I have come to tell you, for you are highly precious. So consider the message and understand the vision:
24Seventy weekse are decreed for your people and your holy city to stop their transgression, to put an end to sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy Place.f
25Know and understand this: From the issuance of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, until the Messiah,g the Prince, there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of distress.
26Then after the sixty-two weeksh the Messiah will be cut off and will have nothing.
Then the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood, and until the end there will be war; desolations have been decreed. 27And he will confirm a covenant with many for one week,i but in the middle of the week he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of the temple will come the abomination that causes desolation,j until the decreed destruction is poured out upon him.k”
With respect, I don't think the person speaking in the excerpt from Coffee and Covid meant "revenge" in the usual one-on-one, "I'm gonna get you" kind of way. For me the sense of it is more like "we want reparations for all the BS. and we want you to stop NOW" - not so much "We want you to suffer."
Great perspective! I tend to look at this moment in time as a ‘stop the bleeding’ event. It’s the time to sober up and en masse recognize what has been inflicted upon society. God has gifted us with power, talent and the ability to course correct.
Thank you Meredith!!! The revelation I had while reading this is that my problem is wanting people who have hurt me to feel bad about what they've done. And yes, if we lived in a healthy society there could be resolution and reconciliation, but as it is now, we all hate each other and aren't even speaking. May I invite people to mosquitorevolution.net where we propose a way out of this quagmire. We see you, Meredith, as a terrific resource who can help lead us to a new, healthy, and happier way of being.
Until now, belonging to a democracy was something like a covert narcissistic family. Being part of it actually meant that we were its property.
Real democracy needs to start from a horizontal scheme, far removed from any power play, although that would imply a minimum of responsibility on the part of everyone.
In an infantilized society, talking about responsibility is like talking about the devil. When in reality it is the only way to be freer.
I enjoyed your article, and I agree that in order to deal with hate and pain you must self review in understanding how NOT to be a victim and learn to set boundaries. At that point there would be no issue with the revenge path. It's a very basic act of growing up. I think we all could use information like this to use in all areas of our lives.
This is the first time I'm hearing for a call for revenge. I think more people should be pissed than actually are for reasons you and I are aware of but they are not (and may never be!). The few I interact with simply want the shenanigans to stop and semi lucid non-actors to actually do their jobs. Instead of creating BS fear nonstop. Those whose loved ones were maimed and/or killed in hospitals have every right to want justice (which may be described as revenge). The only time in my life I wanted revenge was after an abusive relationship and I admit I wasn't thinking clearly. But I also lost my sense of self and reality due to the psychological trauma I experienced. I never acted out revenge, but there is something empowering about playing it out in one's mind. After realizing you've been played, it's a nasty reality to wake up to. If you do.
It is totally counterintuitive to stay or go towards the pain, when there are so many ways to lose yourself in hate (now on the internet you can hate sitting on the sofa at home) or in rescue fantasies (there are more and more heroes who know better than you what you need, they also have help, with all the information we give them using the internet for everything, "tell me your cookies and I'll tell you who you are...").
You feel like a sadomasochist (or a victim) if instead of calming yourself with any of the drugs, addictions of all flavors and colors that we have at our disposal, we choose to stay and embrace our pain, so we can process it without creating more pain in the process, transforming it into learning so that next time we know how to protect and defend ourselves better from abuse, although these are also creative and evolve.
Pain woke me up one day and it seems that this is the price we humans have to pay to see the reality of life. There are more and more shared fictions and narratives that quickly move away from the reality on which they were based and every time we leave one of them we feel pain.
It seems that abuse and chaos are increasing and that is making people wake up from their selective blindness, although there are also many others who will decide or have the ideal circumstances to repeat and recreate their pain.
This is where the importance of people who can guide and accompany humans in this process comes in, leading by example and creating a space like this to be able to express ourselves and dialogue, looking for solutions together.
I think that sometimes I sabotage myself and create problems out of nothing, recreating what the rulers of my country do, so that I can rescue myself later, forgetting that before I swallowed that dysfunctional strategy, perhaps my life was not so bad.
I love the two sentences that I restacked. Even though I don't resonate with all of your framing, I understand the deep need for the words you've written.
Few people seem to understand that those that are guilty of horrible actions were most likely once innocent children that were put through horrors and tortures that are too hard for most people to read about, less comprehend.
So revenge requires no under- standing, just over- standing and beating a tortured creature ( once human creature) with, like you say, hubris and total moral self justification.
A problem in this empathetic way of thinking is that there is no " humane" way to remove power from the traumaticly split personality/ insane, once human vessels, without becoming akin to them.
Not giving them power is nigh impossible in this human form.
I think that by feeling compassion (without trying to save them or want to change them) for these traumatized people who recreate the abuse by becoming abusive, we achieve exactly that, taking away the power they try to pretend to have by being abusive/crazy and returning them to their deep reality as victims.
If we fear them or judge them, we give them power; if we feel compassion (protecting ourselves without letting ourselves be abused, or falling into reactive empathy, codependency) we take away that false power they use as a mask and we return them to reality.
If, for example, we referred to Trump as the deranged victim that he is instead of as the dangerous madman (which is the role he plays to cover up his own victimhood) I think it would be more useful, and we would also take away the possibility of him playing the victim, because he would already be one for everyone. Although the truly decisive factor would be that society was not codependent and ended up falling into the trap of feeling pity and wanting to rescue him, he would simply be removed from office for not being in a good condition to do so.
I think in a bygone tribal era, a dysfunctional person who upset the general workings and survival of the tribe, would - with compassion - be tipped over a cliff.
Thinking of Netanyahu, if he is a victim in/from a former life, as a "deranged victim" he is now multiplying by the tens-of-thousands a whole load more victims, who, in their next incarnation, will might well become narcissistic abusers ... and so society goes down into self-destruction.
And Netanyahu, like Trump, seek political power to avoid their various corruption charges. I think Mussolini being shot and then strung up from a girder so people could vent their anger and frustration on him, COULD possibly be argued as a necessary (if not sacred) act of the masses as a way of beginning to process their trauma, -- inflicted upon them by the actions of yet another of one of history's 'deranged victims' - who has caused so much untold misery for so many. A good lynching of a psychotic dictator is -- maybe -- no bad thing.
I think it's true that it can be therapeutic in some way to have justice done and to punish the abusers, maybe I don't need to see them dead, although it could be a punishment proportional to their misdeeds.
But normally that anger cannot reach the abuser because he defends himself behind his power and army, whether military or that of his followers or collaborators. Apart from the fear of jail time in case of attacking someone (that's why abuses now occur in a deferred manner, through institutions that dilute the identity and responsibility of the abuser)
In the end the anger that seeks revenge ends up spreading to those followers, who are the ones who are within our real reach and those people are nothing more than manipulated, confused and angry victims who end up reacting to the anger of a leader who resonates with their thirst for revenge.
The thirst for revenge and anger today turns against us, because we are not able to unleash it on those directly responsible for the abuse.
The only thing that is obtained: more pain, more chaos, more anger, more helplessness.
Perhaps in the past everything was more direct and simple, there were not so many layers of manipulation and distortion of reality, war today moves on a psychological level.
Or end up crucified as happened to the protagonist of Christianity, my proposal is compassion for the victims who recreate the abuse, as an alternative to falling into the trap of hatred and continuing to feed their fiction of power, or accepting the abuse by sacrificing ourselves as scapegoats.
Simply compassion to return the abusers and the spectators to the reality that beneath their role as bullies they are angry victims and from that reality ask them to take responsibility for their mental hygiene just as we assume they do for their physical hygiene.
I think we rescue abusers from their pain and victimhood every time we fall into the traps of their abuse and bear their victimhood and pain for them.
We cannot cut off the relationship with the abuser because it is given through the entity of "society" to which we belong by being born in a certain place and time. Although if we could already do it on a small scale with the entity "family" we can do the same with this
"to take responsibility for their mental hygiene " -- I think this is key. But abusers simply don't have the capacity (or willingness, is that the same thing?) to take responsibility for their own internal chaos (which they then off-load onto others). This happens on small scale and large scale.
Dealing one-to-one, I can walk away -- but living in a society as a whole, which is shot through with structural evil, (multi-layered as you say, "through institutions that dilute the identity and responsibility of the abuser") ... I'm not sure how to enact compassion.
I can do my best to deal with my own inner turbulences which are triggered by events in the world, (and thereby take responsibility for my own mental hygiene) and try and find my own peace with it all. I was brought up with a father & grandfather who did their bit to stand up to the bullies (in WW2 & WW1 respectively) and maybe that bought an era of peace in my own lifetime - but it seems to have easily slipped back into some kind of retrograde. (I agree, neither retribution, nor rescuing, is the way forward).
Hate is an automatic reaction or defense mechanism that arises to protect us from fear or pain. I grew up in a narcissistic family where they manipulated me and made me react through hate, it's like they feed off emotional reactions, whether negative or positive, and they used them against me.
If I hate my parents, they are fine with that, they remain in the spotlight of power, monopolizing my attention and my emotions and from there they feel superior and powerful, they have control over me, on the other hand, if I interact with them from consciousness instead of reacting to their toxicity, and I remember their condition as mentally ill, (for me, that a person is not capable of taking responsibility for their actions, or of having empathy for having eradicated their own emotions from their being to survive, seems to me the only and true mental illness since it poses a risk/danger for those who live with them and are not like them, since between them abuse and mistreatment is like a game, their way of relating or "loving" each other.
It is from seeing them as sick and treating them as such that they cannot cover up their pain, nor feel superior/powerful and at times you connect them with their wound/trauma and you see them vulnerable, but only for seconds because they quickly change to their state of impassive rock and try to attack or distract or distort, if not I don't react to any of that and I still see it as what it is, reactions of deeply hurt people, unable to connect with their pain because they believe they would die if they do and from there they are capable of killing or harming others to survive, it is from where I feel safest, from reality, without getting into their fictions and distortions.
Reality can be painful but it is from the only place from which things can be changed.
And as long as they are responsible for their irresponsibility or aware of their unconsciousness, for me it is a paradox.
A child cannot become an adult because you ask them to, they need time, it is a process, a learning process, helping them take that step would be more useful than punishing them or criticizing them for not doing something they seem incapable of.
I do not find it useful to blame or punish an addict for not being able to stop drinking/cover up their emotional pain, instead of reminding them of the reality that they are covering up their emotional pain.
Instead of drinking, these people take out their anger by abusing others to feel powerful and cover up their emotional pain.
For me, the point is not to lose sight of that reality and act accordingly.
Thank you for a considered answer; looks like painful experience has given you some powerful insights - but because you took responsibility to work it through. I agree with your insights. I have also found the writing of Meredith Miller (also here on Substack) very helpful in dealing with narcissistic people.
I think when "reactions of deeply hurt people" (in positions of worldly power) adversely affect the lives of millions, then the millions have a right to be protected from them by these 'hurt people' being locked up (at the very least) gifting them an opportunity to process their trauma. Of course they will turn it around and shout 'unfair' and blame a 'witchhunt' is being conducted on them, but the alternative is 'Gaza' and other such horrors. And it needs some mature people to be in positions of power to carry out certain measures without them being corrupted themselves.
It seems various people in secondary positions of power are beginning to speak up in relation to Trump. Perhaps every cloud does (or at least can) have a silver lining.
Marvelous bibliotherapy, Meredith!
#FreeingTruth (ref. John 8:32).
Appreciatively,
LewWelge.com
#CREATORS (Conspiracy Realist Educator Activist Truther Organizer Reader Socializer)
Thanks Meredith. I'm writing some angry stuff on Substack and it is healing. It is not seeking revenge but some process I have to go through after all the BS of Covid. I look forward to my next song which is a spiritual I'm calling Close My Eyes.
I still think I will keep agitating for change but not with too much resentment.
Such important points you bring up.
Yes Meredith, we are at a very precarious juncture. Revenge is actionable hate, and hate is the poison we drink hoping the other person's dies. After my awakening, I had to step out of hate to find peace in my heart not thru forgiveness, but thru detachment. I no longer have any emotional ties to those that I have wronged me. My wish is simply to have the perpetrators removed from society, to stop the persecution of others.
At this stage of my life, I find hopium, the other side of the disempowerment coin, more concerning amongst my fellow freedom fighters. The landslide election of Trump, and his series of appointments, some I'll acknowledge being very encouraging, has led many to live in hope that the savior on a white horse has arrived, lowering their guard. I don't share this enthusiasm, on the contrary, I am redoubling my preparation efforts
.To me, considering his crew and rhetoric, I feel that Trump is leading us, alongside Israel, straight into WW3, the zionist trap. Furthermore I cannot see how his revengeful ways, his seemingly full frontal assault on the bankers, big Pharma, big ag, main stream media, the intelligence and the military complexes, will go unpunished. Will they lay down their arms and abandon their nefarious agenda after centuries of success? I don't think so. In any case, from the little I know, there is nothing anyone can do to stop the complete collapse of the economy and the closing of the banks.
May these events be a catalyst for preparing to live in a world without money in the bank, food in the grocery store, gas at the pump and juice at the electrical outlet. Be well and may God protect you. Thank you for your courage and inspiration.
Daniel 9:
"Gabriel’s Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks
20While I was speaking, praying, confessing my sin and that of my people Israel, and presenting my petition before the LORD my God concerning His holy mountain— 21while I was still praying, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice. 22He instructed me and spoke with me, saying: “O Daniel, I have come now to give you insight and understanding. 23At the beginning of your petitions, an answer went out, and I have come to tell you, for you are highly precious. So consider the message and understand the vision:
24Seventy weekse are decreed for your people and your holy city to stop their transgression, to put an end to sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy Place.f
25Know and understand this: From the issuance of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, until the Messiah,g the Prince, there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of distress.
26Then after the sixty-two weeksh the Messiah will be cut off and will have nothing.
Then the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood, and until the end there will be war; desolations have been decreed. 27And he will confirm a covenant with many for one week,i but in the middle of the week he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of the temple will come the abomination that causes desolation,j until the decreed destruction is poured out upon him.k”
With respect, I don't think the person speaking in the excerpt from Coffee and Covid meant "revenge" in the usual one-on-one, "I'm gonna get you" kind of way. For me the sense of it is more like "we want reparations for all the BS. and we want you to stop NOW" - not so much "We want you to suffer."
Great perspective! I tend to look at this moment in time as a ‘stop the bleeding’ event. It’s the time to sober up and en masse recognize what has been inflicted upon society. God has gifted us with power, talent and the ability to course correct.
Thank you Meredith!!! The revelation I had while reading this is that my problem is wanting people who have hurt me to feel bad about what they've done. And yes, if we lived in a healthy society there could be resolution and reconciliation, but as it is now, we all hate each other and aren't even speaking. May I invite people to mosquitorevolution.net where we propose a way out of this quagmire. We see you, Meredith, as a terrific resource who can help lead us to a new, healthy, and happier way of being.
Thanks for sharing, it looks good
Until now, belonging to a democracy was something like a covert narcissistic family. Being part of it actually meant that we were its property.
Real democracy needs to start from a horizontal scheme, far removed from any power play, although that would imply a minimum of responsibility on the part of everyone.
In an infantilized society, talking about responsibility is like talking about the devil. When in reality it is the only way to be freer.
Why is revenge a concern?
I enjoyed your article, and I agree that in order to deal with hate and pain you must self review in understanding how NOT to be a victim and learn to set boundaries. At that point there would be no issue with the revenge path. It's a very basic act of growing up. I think we all could use information like this to use in all areas of our lives.
This is the first time I'm hearing for a call for revenge. I think more people should be pissed than actually are for reasons you and I are aware of but they are not (and may never be!). The few I interact with simply want the shenanigans to stop and semi lucid non-actors to actually do their jobs. Instead of creating BS fear nonstop. Those whose loved ones were maimed and/or killed in hospitals have every right to want justice (which may be described as revenge). The only time in my life I wanted revenge was after an abusive relationship and I admit I wasn't thinking clearly. But I also lost my sense of self and reality due to the psychological trauma I experienced. I never acted out revenge, but there is something empowering about playing it out in one's mind. After realizing you've been played, it's a nasty reality to wake up to. If you do.
It is totally counterintuitive to stay or go towards the pain, when there are so many ways to lose yourself in hate (now on the internet you can hate sitting on the sofa at home) or in rescue fantasies (there are more and more heroes who know better than you what you need, they also have help, with all the information we give them using the internet for everything, "tell me your cookies and I'll tell you who you are...").
You feel like a sadomasochist (or a victim) if instead of calming yourself with any of the drugs, addictions of all flavors and colors that we have at our disposal, we choose to stay and embrace our pain, so we can process it without creating more pain in the process, transforming it into learning so that next time we know how to protect and defend ourselves better from abuse, although these are also creative and evolve.
Pain woke me up one day and it seems that this is the price we humans have to pay to see the reality of life. There are more and more shared fictions and narratives that quickly move away from the reality on which they were based and every time we leave one of them we feel pain.
It seems that abuse and chaos are increasing and that is making people wake up from their selective blindness, although there are also many others who will decide or have the ideal circumstances to repeat and recreate their pain.
This is where the importance of people who can guide and accompany humans in this process comes in, leading by example and creating a space like this to be able to express ourselves and dialogue, looking for solutions together.
Thank you, Mera
I think that sometimes I sabotage myself and create problems out of nothing, recreating what the rulers of my country do, so that I can rescue myself later, forgetting that before I swallowed that dysfunctional strategy, perhaps my life was not so bad.
Yes!
Revenge is not what a wise person does.
Humanity has moved on from revenge to seeking understanding and solving problems.
We have learned much after being hurt and manipulated by predators, whether in politics and business or at home.
I love the two sentences that I restacked. Even though I don't resonate with all of your framing, I understand the deep need for the words you've written.
I ABSOLUTELY concur with your closing statement, Meredith --- JOY trumps SORROW each and every time!!
Trust in the Lord
Well said!
Few people seem to understand that those that are guilty of horrible actions were most likely once innocent children that were put through horrors and tortures that are too hard for most people to read about, less comprehend.
So revenge requires no under- standing, just over- standing and beating a tortured creature ( once human creature) with, like you say, hubris and total moral self justification.
A problem in this empathetic way of thinking is that there is no " humane" way to remove power from the traumaticly split personality/ insane, once human vessels, without becoming akin to them.
Not giving them power is nigh impossible in this human form.
I think that by feeling compassion (without trying to save them or want to change them) for these traumatized people who recreate the abuse by becoming abusive, we achieve exactly that, taking away the power they try to pretend to have by being abusive/crazy and returning them to their deep reality as victims.
If we fear them or judge them, we give them power; if we feel compassion (protecting ourselves without letting ourselves be abused, or falling into reactive empathy, codependency) we take away that false power they use as a mask and we return them to reality.
If, for example, we referred to Trump as the deranged victim that he is instead of as the dangerous madman (which is the role he plays to cover up his own victimhood) I think it would be more useful, and we would also take away the possibility of him playing the victim, because he would already be one for everyone. Although the truly decisive factor would be that society was not codependent and ended up falling into the trap of feeling pity and wanting to rescue him, he would simply be removed from office for not being in a good condition to do so.
I think in a bygone tribal era, a dysfunctional person who upset the general workings and survival of the tribe, would - with compassion - be tipped over a cliff.
Thinking of Netanyahu, if he is a victim in/from a former life, as a "deranged victim" he is now multiplying by the tens-of-thousands a whole load more victims, who, in their next incarnation, will might well become narcissistic abusers ... and so society goes down into self-destruction.
And Netanyahu, like Trump, seek political power to avoid their various corruption charges. I think Mussolini being shot and then strung up from a girder so people could vent their anger and frustration on him, COULD possibly be argued as a necessary (if not sacred) act of the masses as a way of beginning to process their trauma, -- inflicted upon them by the actions of yet another of one of history's 'deranged victims' - who has caused so much untold misery for so many. A good lynching of a psychotic dictator is -- maybe -- no bad thing.
P.S. (I'm responding to what you edited later):
I think it's true that it can be therapeutic in some way to have justice done and to punish the abusers, maybe I don't need to see them dead, although it could be a punishment proportional to their misdeeds.
But normally that anger cannot reach the abuser because he defends himself behind his power and army, whether military or that of his followers or collaborators. Apart from the fear of jail time in case of attacking someone (that's why abuses now occur in a deferred manner, through institutions that dilute the identity and responsibility of the abuser)
In the end the anger that seeks revenge ends up spreading to those followers, who are the ones who are within our real reach and those people are nothing more than manipulated, confused and angry victims who end up reacting to the anger of a leader who resonates with their thirst for revenge.
The thirst for revenge and anger today turns against us, because we are not able to unleash it on those directly responsible for the abuse.
The only thing that is obtained: more pain, more chaos, more anger, more helplessness.
Perhaps in the past everything was more direct and simple, there were not so many layers of manipulation and distortion of reality, war today moves on a psychological level.
Or end up crucified as happened to the protagonist of Christianity, my proposal is compassion for the victims who recreate the abuse, as an alternative to falling into the trap of hatred and continuing to feed their fiction of power, or accepting the abuse by sacrificing ourselves as scapegoats.
Simply compassion to return the abusers and the spectators to the reality that beneath their role as bullies they are angry victims and from that reality ask them to take responsibility for their mental hygiene just as we assume they do for their physical hygiene.
I think we rescue abusers from their pain and victimhood every time we fall into the traps of their abuse and bear their victimhood and pain for them.
We cannot cut off the relationship with the abuser because it is given through the entity of "society" to which we belong by being born in a certain place and time. Although if we could already do it on a small scale with the entity "family" we can do the same with this
"to take responsibility for their mental hygiene " -- I think this is key. But abusers simply don't have the capacity (or willingness, is that the same thing?) to take responsibility for their own internal chaos (which they then off-load onto others). This happens on small scale and large scale.
Dealing one-to-one, I can walk away -- but living in a society as a whole, which is shot through with structural evil, (multi-layered as you say, "through institutions that dilute the identity and responsibility of the abuser") ... I'm not sure how to enact compassion.
I can do my best to deal with my own inner turbulences which are triggered by events in the world, (and thereby take responsibility for my own mental hygiene) and try and find my own peace with it all. I was brought up with a father & grandfather who did their bit to stand up to the bullies (in WW2 & WW1 respectively) and maybe that bought an era of peace in my own lifetime - but it seems to have easily slipped back into some kind of retrograde. (I agree, neither retribution, nor rescuing, is the way forward).
Hate is an automatic reaction or defense mechanism that arises to protect us from fear or pain. I grew up in a narcissistic family where they manipulated me and made me react through hate, it's like they feed off emotional reactions, whether negative or positive, and they used them against me.
If I hate my parents, they are fine with that, they remain in the spotlight of power, monopolizing my attention and my emotions and from there they feel superior and powerful, they have control over me, on the other hand, if I interact with them from consciousness instead of reacting to their toxicity, and I remember their condition as mentally ill, (for me, that a person is not capable of taking responsibility for their actions, or of having empathy for having eradicated their own emotions from their being to survive, seems to me the only and true mental illness since it poses a risk/danger for those who live with them and are not like them, since between them abuse and mistreatment is like a game, their way of relating or "loving" each other.
It is from seeing them as sick and treating them as such that they cannot cover up their pain, nor feel superior/powerful and at times you connect them with their wound/trauma and you see them vulnerable, but only for seconds because they quickly change to their state of impassive rock and try to attack or distract or distort, if not I don't react to any of that and I still see it as what it is, reactions of deeply hurt people, unable to connect with their pain because they believe they would die if they do and from there they are capable of killing or harming others to survive, it is from where I feel safest, from reality, without getting into their fictions and distortions.
Reality can be painful but it is from the only place from which things can be changed.
And as long as they are responsible for their irresponsibility or aware of their unconsciousness, for me it is a paradox.
A child cannot become an adult because you ask them to, they need time, it is a process, a learning process, helping them take that step would be more useful than punishing them or criticizing them for not doing something they seem incapable of.
I do not find it useful to blame or punish an addict for not being able to stop drinking/cover up their emotional pain, instead of reminding them of the reality that they are covering up their emotional pain.
Instead of drinking, these people take out their anger by abusing others to feel powerful and cover up their emotional pain.
For me, the point is not to lose sight of that reality and act accordingly.
Thank you for a considered answer; looks like painful experience has given you some powerful insights - but because you took responsibility to work it through. I agree with your insights. I have also found the writing of Meredith Miller (also here on Substack) very helpful in dealing with narcissistic people.
I think when "reactions of deeply hurt people" (in positions of worldly power) adversely affect the lives of millions, then the millions have a right to be protected from them by these 'hurt people' being locked up (at the very least) gifting them an opportunity to process their trauma. Of course they will turn it around and shout 'unfair' and blame a 'witchhunt' is being conducted on them, but the alternative is 'Gaza' and other such horrors. And it needs some mature people to be in positions of power to carry out certain measures without them being corrupted themselves.
It seems various people in secondary positions of power are beginning to speak up in relation to Trump. Perhaps every cloud does (or at least can) have a silver lining.