Poll finds folks want hate to abate

Respondents to the Totally Unbiased (TUP) Poll cited many reasons for their belief that procreation in the United States today would be immoral.

“Religion in the United States today has become a reason for hatred,” many respondents said, in post-poll interviews. “And not just in the United States.”

The consensus was that there is nothing wrong with religion itself, only with the way it is used and perverted by powerful men — primarily men.

Nearly half of the Jewish respondents felt that Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud party, Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Jewish Power party, and Belazel Smotrich and his Religious Zionism party, along with the Republican Party under Trump, regularly use religion to incite violence and hatred.

“Not that we’re excusing Hamas or Alla Them Mullahs (ATM) for their part in this,” one respondent said, on condition of anonymity. (His name is Steve.)

Hindus and Buddhists commented that it would be unfair to leave Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party off the list of religious bigots.

But respondents of all religions felt that White Christian Nationalists and MAGA Republicans, in a statistical tie with Likud, led the world in inciting hatred and violence through religion.

“What I don’t understand is why so many Republicans have such inordinate interest in how they think other people have sex,” another respondent said, on condition of anonymity. (His name is Bob.)

“I mean, isn’t spending a lot of time imagining how other people have sex sort of a sin in itself?” Bob added. “Not to mention a waste of time.”

Bob’s close friend Steve added: “I can’t think of any quote-unquote ‘great’ religion that devotes a great deal of its time to finding people to hate, and encouraging others to hate them. And devising laws to punish them. Didn’t that go out with witch burning? I believe it did. So why are they trying to bring it back?”

Here a female respondent added: “A lot of these quasi-religious haters don’t even hate real people; they hate abstract concepts that they’ve dreamed up, or had pounded into their demented minds, then attributed to people they never met and never will.

“Why are they so preoccupied with imaginary demons? It has nothing to do with the people they say they hate, but don’t know. It only has to do with them. They’re hating the demons spawned by their own minds,” added this respondent, on condition of anonymity for fear of violent and/or career-ending retribution. (Her name is Sue.)

“Look,” interposed a man of the cloth, “there is absolutely no reason to hate, and stir up hatred, against people who you think don’t think exactly like you. If that’s what you think religion is, then — pardon me — you’re a miserable human being, trapped in an imaginary dungeon of your own making.

“The way you think other people think is no one’s business. Actually, the way you think other people think is meaningless. It’s indefinable and absurd. As the great atheist Voltaire wrote in Candide, we’d all be better off if we just tend our own garden.”

Bob and Steve then interjected: “Since there is no chance of procreation, we think that only gay sex is moral under Trump. Or sex with proper protections against insemination.”

Then an aged crone intervened, saying:

“Double double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble.”

Here she broke from the script saying:

“Why do you conjure up hate from your seamy cauldrons, against love?

“Why do you invent reasons to hate people who have done you no wrong?

“Seems to me you just like hating — anything — so long as you can hate.

“For all the good it does you — or anyone else.”

(Courthouse News columnist Robert Kahn is not actually Jewish. But he’d have been Jewish enough for Hitler. Or Himmler. Or Göring. Or Goebbels. Or Heydrich. Or Bormann. Or their collaborators.)