The research on chronic hostility is fairly consistent. People who carry long-running anger and resentment have higher rates of heart disease and high blood pressure, sleep worse, and ruminate more. The problem seems to be that sustained hatred keeps the body’s threat response running.

There’s also a mental cost. Hatred tends to take up space, as it has taken up our political system. It pulls attention back to the other person, replays old scenes, and can quietly come to organize part of your identity around them.

I watch in sadness as people who call themselves leaders – older people with power – treat other people with the utmost cruelty and lack of empathy. I never see them smile, and I pity them. Hatred is just not healthy. To do it unthinkingly and constantly is like taking a slow poison.

I don’t really need research to know that, but it helps me feel better. This explains why I feel like my country is sick. Hating people because they are not like us is, to me, a sin, a crime, and a sickness.