I'm a Hater.

Our new roommate is going to be working for an extremely liberal senator, and told one of my other roommates about this.  My current roommate told her that she should look forward to interesting conversations - especially with the house's resident "liberal-hater": me. 

Liberal-hater??

Um, yeah.  I'm a bit confused by that description.  It's amazing how people can live with you for several months, yet have no idea who you are or what you represent.  Or maybe they have an idea of what I'm like, but they don't bother to articulate it properly to someone who is going to be moving in with us.  It would have been a lot funnier if that conversation hadn't happened to be between a soon-to-be-roommate and a current one.  Joking or not, I'd like new roommates to meet me without ideas pre-planted in advance. 

Especially wrong ones. 

If you want to know how I feel about a variety of political issues, you can look around OP and pick out my entries in the Politik category of the site.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am a far from a liberal-hater. 

Nope.  I'm just a damn hater. 

Here is some of what I hate:

I hate extremists of any stripe, and I hate predictability.  I hate it when I can talk to a person for a few minutes, a few days or a few months, and thus be able to predict how they will feel about 95% of political issues.  I hate when people wear their politics on their sleeves to the point that it dominates almost every interaction I have with the person; in my mind, the only excuse for this is if you work in politics.  And even then, it's still annoying. 

People have told me they hate how I make everything a racial issue.  The thing is, I'm joking 75% of the time when I make racial comments.  I'm talking about the people who SERIOUSLY make virtually everything about themselves into a political stance, including the food they eat, the shoes they wear -- and even the clothes YOU wear.  I hate that with a passion.

I don't like to be consumed by any single aspect of my feelings, beliefs or hobbies.  I like to let things go.  I also don't want to be completely random, but I don't want to be so typecast that people will always be able to predict my reactions and responses to every type of political stimulus. 

I hate it when people instinctively surround themselves with other people who seem to represent the same political values they do (even though those values have nothing to do with the kind of person they are at the core).  Every time I see groups of hippies or uptight right-wingers flocking together, I gag a little inside.  Wonderful.  Way to preach to the choir.  And no, I don't care that you just came from an event.  Thanks to your buttons, bumper-stickers and clothes scrawled with political statements, I don't even have to wonder how you any of you feel about a whole host of issues.  Apparently, you've made it your duty to broadcast it to everyone.  A note from the rest of us: you're not original.

There are lots of people who work for nonprofits, attend protests and boycott products and corporations for their perceived injustices who (when you get to know them) turn out to be really shitty people.  I've met plenty of people who consider themselves positive difference-makers who will stab you in the back.  Who can't be trusted around your stuff.  Who shirk their responsibilities in their personal lives as soon as the heat gets turned up or the lights go on. 

It's no different from churchgoing, allegedly-devout Christian conservatives who talk about people behind their backs all the time.  Or who beat their wives.  Or, to be more extreme, priests who molest kids.  All are pathetic in my eyes. 

That's what I hate. 

I don't hate liberals, and I don't hate conservatives.  That's because, generally speaking, I don't give a flying fuck about someone's political beliefs.  By themselves, a person's politics won't determine whether I'm drawn to them or not or whether they are a positive force in my life. 

If you work hard to push your liberal/conservative beliefs, but in your personal life you are a lazy sack of shit who can't be counted on and takes people for granted, all of that political stuff is irrelevant to me.  Conversely, if you are apolitical yet also positive, loyal, fun, kind and trustworthy, then I'll probably like you a lot. 

So yes, I'm a hater.  No need to put a prefix on it. 

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