In 1955, popular talk show host Steve Allen wrote a chilling short story. Set in the faraway future of the late 1970s, the story begins in New York City’s Yankee Stadium, where some 70,000 spectators munch on hot dogs and down cold beers as they eagerly await the afternoon’s main event.
But this is no World Series game for which the crowds have assembled. In Allen’s dystopian future, they are there to join in a “public hating.” Drawing on the depths of their collective hatred, the mob directs such powerful mass hostility and rage at a political prisoner that the unlucky victim actually suffers physical pain, writhing and convulsing to the point of death.
Today – at a time when the American Left has taken its personal animosity toward President Donald Trump to hysterical and at times violent extremes – Allen’s story, “The Public Hating,” seems practically clairvoyant. Instead of gathering in a stadium, today’s haters post photos online of the president’s bloody, decapitated head. They make music videos depicting his murder. They tweet about their desire for his assassination. And when that fails to quench their hatred, they don masks, wield clubs, and use brute force to assault his supporters – all in the name of “love trumps hate,” of course.
Ironically, Allen wrote his story amid the national fear of Communist infiltration that became known as McCarthyism. At the time, it was the American Left that decried the witch hunt atmosphere of the McCarthy hearings. They staunchly declared their defense of free speech and the U.S. Constitution. And they protested the accusations hurled and reputations ruined without any substantiating evidence.
Yet today, it is the Left and its media allies who have set as their goal nothing less than the removal from office of a lawfully elected sitting U.S. president. No outlandish rumor is beyond circulation, no crisis beyond exploitation. They don’t know exactly what Trump has done to warrant removal from office, but they are absolutely certain he has to go, and they’re not about to let trivial things like the Constitution, the rule of law, or an absence of evidence get in their way.
The parallel between “The Public Hating” and the Left’s hatred for Donald Trump is shown most acutely through the short story’s master of ceremonies – identified as the former president of Harvard University – who whips the crowd into a frenzy of mass animosity capable of inflicting pain and death. He is the personification of today’s mainstream media, which has long since abandoned any pretense of objectivity in favor of partisanship and allegiance to its anti-Trump agenda.
“I want you to let him know that he is worse than a murderer, that he has committed treason, that he is not loved by anyone, anywhere in the universe, and that he is, rather, despised with a vigor equal in heat to the power of the sun itself!” he screams. “…I demand of you that you unleash your power to despise. I want you to become ferocious. … Do you hate this man?”
Sound familiar?
The saving grace of “The Public Hating” is a lone figure who observes the crowd’s malevolent assault with growing horror. As he watches the sea of faces contorted with rage and the prisoner thrashing about in anguish, he finds he can stomach the brutal attack no longer. Rejecting hatred, he stands up and leaves before the mob completes its repugnant task.
Today’s Left is similarly consumed by hate – so much so, that it seems as though hating Trump has become the new McCarthyism. How long must we wait before the American people can no longer stomach the vicious attacks on President Trump and say, “Enough”?
Jennifer Logue is a writer, former newspaper editor, and communications consultant. A Massachusetts native, she moved in 2013 to Florida, or as she likes to call it, “America.”
Steve Allen 
