My pal Bob Elisberg writes about How to Hate the President. I'm linking though I don't agree completely with Bob on this one. Like, I don't think George W. Bush was wrong, per se, to cut taxes during a war. Cutting taxes can be a very good thing. I think Bush was wrong to cut taxes without cutting spending, which is difficult to do during a war. Slight difference. I also think he was wrong to shift too much of the burden from the wealthy to the middle and especially the lower class. And I don't "hate" him for that. I just think he did a very good thing for his friends and a very bad thing to the rest of us.
This may be a small, obvious point but I think we've cheapened a lot of words and metaphors lately. Hitler and Nazis used to have a specific historical reference and now they've kind of become freeform insults for anyone you don't like for any reason. If Obama goes out for cheeseburgers, he's Hitler. If my gardener overtrims the hedges, he's a Nazi. If someone ever comes along again who arranges for mass genocide, it's going to be very difficult to compare them to anything meaningful. I'm also bothered by the way some are tossing the word "hate" around.