Since hatred is neither reasonable nor rational, the question, "What did you (they) do to make them hate you (them) so?" is nonsensical, "Why does he hate you (them)?" equally so. The questions assume that hatred is a rational response; it is not. Hatred is a feeling of a hater. It isn't rational, and—if truth be told, it's not even a response to something outside the hater, although haters often (or usually) expertly rationalize their hatreds. Hatred is a possession of a hater, although whether it possesses her or she possesses it, I cannot say.

Crazy?

If hatred is neither reasonable nor rational, does that mean it is craziness? No; and that's crazy logic: if a crazy person wears a hat, does that make every person who wears a hat crazy? no. Hatred is an emotion for which we English-speakers have an even smaller vernacular than our vernacular for love (English is notorious for having so few ways to talk about love; by the same token, French has a very rich 'language of love'). In America, hatred, like death, like love, has been banished to the unspeakable.

Hate is such an unpleasant emotion that most persons would prefer to deny any personal knowledge of it. "I don't hate anyone," said a politician recently, suggesting that hatred is too base for his sensibility, as well as intimating that hatred is something out of control, and that he is always in control of himself.

Of course that is preposterous. To be human is to experience all emotions— to be civilized may be to control them, or to sublimate; but not to deny their existences.

To hate is transitive: rare is the hater who doesn't make her hate obvious, if not felt.

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*Sharon of Israel, speaking of his feelings about Arafat of Palestine.