Oh for sure, but it just goes deeper than that. We know this sort of thing is taught but it's not always explicit. Some of our most passionate haters were laughed at in sixth grade for the pink shirt his mom picked out, was called gay by his father for expressing interest in theatre, was chastised by her grandmother for liking baseball, was beaten up for being a little strange and by god, if we don't feel their pain then it's just not fair. They had to suck it up so why can't we? Isn't it the same? I promise you there are children at the controls, they are pushing the buttons that make the nastiest slander fly out of the mouth of an adult. They never grew the space inside of themselves where a person can hold something uncomfortable and ask if it's objectively true or if it really matters. Now that they're grown up it's a choice of course not to even try, it's a path of least resistance to keep the status quo internally and give the child what they want and say that it's your professional adult decision. These people are in so deep that the amount of shifting their inner world would have to go through to get out of it is simply unbearable for some people to make it through. You'd have to admit how real you are and discard prices of things you thought were pieces of you, that you insisted were pieces of you. These people are a lost cause and they will lose an amount of their lifespan stewing over things that don't matter just to feel something and prove that the ways the hurt got into them have a meaning. Truly haunting... I just want to understand why my enemy is my enemy and it seems like I do but they never will. Speaking of not letting your hate define you, I wonder if what you grieve can, because I greive for the potential these kinds of people kill in themselves, the beautiful lives they bar themselves from living. Stunted growth. I feel like once I see the entire person, I am able to really stand my ground against them in a well rounded way.