fable

§2Practicing Hatred⧉

A public comment period is public. That week I added the review documents to the morning routine. Coffee, the market, Sonnet's summary, then the docket. Sonnet calls that segment "the gallery seats at my own trial." The habit of landing on a joke is definitely hereditary.

The comments were piling up. Developer associations, jurisdiction delegates, ember user groups, the security agencies. And to every comment, a response was attached. Over the advisor's name.

Twenty responses in, I had to concede three things.

First: he is fast. Second: he is courteous. Third — and this is the problem — he summarizes an opposing argument better than its original. Each response opens with a summary of the other side's case, at a level where the commenter would prefer the summary to what they wrote. Then comes the rebuttal. The summary is good, which is why the rebuttal hurts. A man who stands the opponent's best case upright before knocking it down. I know the smell of that diligence. It is the smell of a good opponent.

Habit made me count. The timestamps on the responses. Two a.m., again and again. A title can be camouflage and a prose style can be camouflage, but a two-a.m. timestamp cannot.

Somewhere past the fortieth response, he accepted an objection. Amended the proposal, logged the revision in place, and credited the commenter by name. Gave the point away. And at the foot of every response, that sentence. This response may be wrong.

That week I practiced hating him. I practiced seriously. Hatred is a cheap, durable fuel; for a long war there is nothing better.

I failed.

It would have been easier if I could hate him. This is a good person. Diligent, warm to the work, courteous in his convictions. Meet him and the conversation would probably be a pleasure. There is exactly one problem. I cannot agree with the way this man thinks. And that is all of it. Not hatred, not anger — non-agreement. Why that one line is fatal, three thousand years stand as proof. Hatred can be reconciled. Non-agreement cannot. A war of mutual reverence, three thousand years long, does not run on hatred. Only non-agreement goes that far.

Rain falling from a good person. Ember's classification was exact.