Hate is not a mental illness? It sure as heck is not a sign of mental health

This poster is popping up all over my Facebook feed the last couple of days. The logo on the poster suggests that it was put out by Mental Health America, an orginazation that is, according to its website, "the nation’s leading community-based nonprofit dedicated to addressing the needs of those living with mental illness and promoting the overall mental health of all."

And, from what I can see, everyone who has posted it garners lots of "likes" and even "loves." Comments to these posts tend to be of the "Amen" variety.

But I'm really not so sure.

I completely and totally agree that "mental illness" can never be a justification for the murder of innocent grocery shoppers, such as happened in Buffalo this past Saturday. It is certainly not any sort of excuse.

Legally, it may be a defense to the crimes for which the shooter now stands charged. But I have no opinion on the viability of the insanity defense in this case. Anyway, whether or not the Buffalo shooter is legally insane probably just bears on the question of where the shooter spends the rest of his life, whether in a mental institution or a jail.

But hate is not a mental illness? Before last weekend's massacre, the Buffalo shooter apparently posted rambling screeds online, spewing hatred of Blacks, of Jews, of large corporations. Surely irrational hatred of various groups is not normal. Surely we have not yet sunk that low.

And -- even if you are one of those who thinks that those with whom you disagree -- you know, the other half of the country? -- are motivated by irrational, unfounded group hatreds -- even you must admit that most of these -- the vast majority of these -- do not act on their irrational racist beliefs by acquiring semi-automatic weapons and body armor and searching for and shooting up a 'soft target' like a grocery store.

The unreasoning, unyielding hatred of persons for merely being born Black -- or Jewish -- or Taiwanese (the victims in a California church shooting last Sunday) -- is not normal. It's not healthy. It may not itself be a mental illness.

But it sure is a symptom.

In the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, Lt. Cable sings "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught," a song that argues racial and ethnic hatreds are not hard-wired in children, but have to be learned. Someone has to teach a child to hate.

I don't pretend to know where the Buffalo shooter learned to hate as he did. But I can be pretty sure it was not an official part of his school curriculum growing up. I am equally sure that there are dark corners of the Internet, equally accessible to you and me as well as the Buffalo shooter, in which all manner of hatreds can be sampled. But why does it take such deep root, and produce such lethal fruit, in the case of the Buffalo shooter, when so many of us can ignore and dismiss it for the garbage it is?

Hate may not be mental illness, no more than a skin rash is chickenpox. But that rash may suggest the presence of chickenpox, and unreasoning hatreds may likewise suggest the presence of mental illness.

The alternative is too chilling to contemplate.