Azzi: An America where hatred is cultivated as a civic passion

"I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough," Isaac Asimov wrote in a memoir. "My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library ... the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it ..."

I know that feeling well, and am forever thankful those sacred doors — illuminated by generations of lamps reflected from golden doors — were open to me.

I know that feeling well, yet am fearful of a blasphemous citizenry, no longer just a fringe, presently assaulting our sacred spaces, trying to shutter them, trying to deny access not only to sojourners but to the curious, to all people unlike themselves.

Denying access to the past, to truth, to beauty — to the future.

This tiki-torch bearing, book-burning, unthinking and irredeemably ambitious segment of our citizenry is beyond shame: they are trying to install themselves as our mentors and guides not as Rumi would guide us but as invaders in our schools, libraries, homes, and wombs; who would force their primitive beliefs on all Americans.

“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry," Umberto Eco wrote in The Name of the Rose. "When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...”

Ask what it means.

It is not education's role to cater to the fanciful delusions that some politicians and parents have that this is a Christian nation, evolution did not occur, climate change isn't real, that LGBTQIA+ people don't exist, and that institutional racism does not persist to this very moment.

Parents and politicians who deny all humanity is created equal.

There are days when I fear, as de Tocqueville feared, "where [such people] look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution ..."

I read a lot. Perhaps, because I grew up without books, I'm today surrounded by them. They're my pleasure, my defense, my escape, my point of entry into worlds beyond my horizon, sanctuaries where books become seductive temptresses inviting me into invisible spaces of wisdom, wonder and achievement.

Books are where we search for the unseen.

Reading also reassures me that there continue to be constellations of sanity and intellect beyond the madness of lies and deceit we witness today. I don't read as much as I used to but still try to read at least two books a week.

Sometimes I re-read authors who challenge me, amuse me with unexpected delights and insights, introduce me to vital phenomena. This month I've been rereading some Umberto Eco, who wrote in The Prague Cemetery, “Someone said that patriotism is the last refuge of cowards; those without moral principles usually wrap a flag around themselves, and those bastards always talk about the purity of race.”

That strikes me as too true to ignore.

I also read online, often visiting blogs infested by nasty, and aggressive trolls and racists who are not only dismissive of the rights of others but who refuse to read or watch anything that might challenge their world view.

In their world “ ... the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same," Eco continued. "Hatred has to be cultivated as a civic passion... You always want someone to hate in order to feel justified in your own misery.”

On Jan. 6, 2021, as I was watching the breaching of the U.S. Capitol by a Trump-inspired insurrection and attempted coup against the United States I could not have imagined that nearly two years later I would not only be living among Americans who supported those seditious acts but that some of those same Americans would be running for political office on a platform of denial of those events.

I am told that such people really aren’t so bad or ignorant, that they're just victims of the Big Lie and social media.

I don't believe it.

I think they — no longer a fringe — embrace it because that's who they are; angry, fearful, resentful and full of grievances, following the same false prophets who have challenged the promise of America for centuries.

For too long we have fought those false prophets; fought the demons of hate, racism, and exclusion.

“Fear prophets," Eco warns us, "and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.”

Ask what it means.

Robert Azzi, a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter, can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Azzi: An America where hatred is cultivated as a civic passion