Yesterday Eric Trump, son of President Donald Trump, said that his father's political enemies were to him 'not even people'. It's a new low and as Britain concludes another divisive election campaign, it betrays the current state of much modern politics.
We've learned to hate and denigrate the people we disagree with, dehumanising our opponents – and losing our own humanity on the way.
'I've never seen hatred like this,' Eric Trump told Fox News's Sean Hannity yesterday. 'To me, they're not even people. It's so, so sad. Morality's just gone, morals have flown out the window and we deserve so much better than this as a country.'
The irony is, Trump was responding to personal attacks that had been made against him and his father, such as one critic who had called his father a 'piece of s**t'. In responding as he did, Eric rendered those critics as literally sub-human, so his righteous outrage loses its bite somewhat.
It's obviously amusing that Eric laments the loss of morality and decency in politics when his father largely made his mark on the scene by constantly slandering, insulting and belittling his opponents. But that's not even the point. Trump's comment is a bare statement of how a lot of people feel about people they don't like.
Britain has been drinking the same poison too. Don't like Conservative policies? Just call the Tories 'evil'. Unconvinced by Labour's ideas? Then label them 'stupid' and 'dangerous'. Brexiteers are racist bigots, and Remainers are smug metropolitan elites.
Use whatever language you can to make distance, draw deep divides and paint yourself a villain you'd love to hate. If you've spent much time on Facebook, or just a moment on Twitter, you've probably witnessed this.
As Brian Resnik wrote for Vox, 'dehumanisation is a mental loophole that allows us to dismiss other people's feelings and experience'. It's a popular tool in the hands of oppressors, because once you've made the dismissal, it becomes so much easier to hurt that person.
In some ways, we're increasingly aware of how divided we are. Events like Brexit and the Trump's election victory showed us we were suffocated by our own echo-chambers, surrounding us with our ideological allies, and offering only skewed glimpses of our apparent arch-villains. We see this more clearly now, but the pattern of polarisation is hard to break.
But perhaps there's a glimpse of good in all this hatred. It's a passion for certain causes that prompts people's deep antagonism to those they perceive as opposing what's right. The NHS, a frequent flashpoint of British politics, provokes emotive responses – people's lives are at risk. So too with questions about immigration, the economy and fighting terror.
And it's even OK to be angry, to despair at injustice and long for peace. It's good to care about causes, but if we lose our humanity on the way, what's the point?
In Christian theology, every soul you've ever met is made in the image of God. No matter how broken and sinful they may seem to you, their lives have been made and graced by the creator of the universe. None are beyond saving. When you curse your enemy and call them 'sub-human', you curse God's creation.
Jesus understood that we wouldn't all get along, but nonetheless called his followers to love their enemies, and pray for their persecutors. He never rose to the hatred that fell upon him – he truly loved his enemies to the end.
I would wager that you can't love your enemy and hate them too. Not that Christ-like love is an easy call to follow, it's as hard as they come. When we're passionate and frustrated, it's easy to lash out with words we haven't thought through. But the world, noisy and broken as it already is, needs better.
It's a climb, but the path to peace needn't be impossible. A simple, liberating proverb comes to mind: 'If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.'
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