What does it mean to be consumed by hatred? Perhaps if we want to find out, we should ask Trump. His whole presidency, his whole life seems to be ruled by hatred, by grievance collecting, and by vengeance. By resentment and by bitterness. We can say that the whole thrust of his life is ruled by a kind of negative passion. Whereas for most people, normal passion is the energy that forms the basis of a very positive connection with other people, of bonding with them, and of loving them, negative passion is the energy that forms the basis of a very negative separation, of a very negative avoidance of other people, even of a very negative pushing other people away through rage and conflict. By being able to expel this energy onto focused targets in the external world, designated scapegoats for all of the frustration that he feels inside him, Trump is able to prevent this energy from turning on him and blowing him apart, at least metaphorically.
Passion, whether positive or negative, derives from emotional states of mind within the individual. But whereas positive passion has as its goal the development of meaningful figures of love relationships, negative passion has as its goal the breakdown of human relationships until there is just a void, an emptiness, an experiential vacuum. Both kinds of passion keep going until the energy temporarily dissipates, but whereas the dissipation of energy in positive passion, results in a positive solid emotional bond remaining, the dissipation of energy in negative passion results in a state of total detachment remaining.
Now, it is true that many relationships combine positive and negative passion. When people want to have a sexual fling, the relationship goes through its stage of intense connection, and then at a given point, before the relationship gets too serious, either at the instigation of one of the partners or else by mutual agreement, the relationship is broken off. First the stage of positive passion and then the stage of negative passion. Sometimes, one or both partners can manifest expressions of positive and negative passion simultaneously. This occurs when one or both partners feel conflictive with regard to the other person. Finally, there is the situation where let’s say, a person starts out feeling positive passion towards another person. But then, little by little, his feelings start changing, negative passion creeps into his attitudes and then it displaces entirely the positive passion.
Although it may seem to my readers I have been talking primarily about relationships between individuals here, passion also can have a strong group manifestation. A candidate for office can run a passionate political campaign. Now most American political campaigns try to attract voters through positive messages. Rather than focusing on all that went wrong in the past, the focus is on what the candidate will do for the future to make life better for the citizens of the United States. However, with Trump, the focus is almost always on the past. In particular, on his past. On all the grievances he has accumulated against his fellow countrymen and against foreigners as well. Talk about negative passion. The fury, the rage that he expresses is unbelievably explosive. It is so great, that he feels a need to find targets in the whole country, and even the whole world. All the different government agencies, all the migrant workers, all the people of color, all the lgbtq people, all the veterans, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Greenland, Europe. The list goes on and on and on. About Jews, Trump has rather conflictive feelings, but that is the subject for another article.
In truth, many of the MAGA people have had similarly troubled loveless childhoods. In other words, they have grown up in experiential vacuums like Trump. They have had to fight off numbness all of their lives. And there is nothing like negative passion to do this. Negative passion is a source of energy that develops precisely in order to fight off numbness in today’s modern technological society. At some point, the sensory distortion starts to affect people and the negative passion starts to appear, and more and more people develop the need to start destroying things in order to feel alive. Of course, Trump and his buddy Musk are the main mass destroyers of the infrastructure of the government today. Hopefully, we can find a way to stop this destruction, before we all end up in one endless experiential vacuum.
© 2025 Laurence Mesirow
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