Deborah Hill Cone: Happy to hate - if only I could

The problem with getting older is that it gets harder to hate people. While this might not be a bad thing for most civilians, it is a serious problem if you are a journalist. Columnists run on anger - you need to have someone to rail against. And my stock of villains is looking a bit thin. Eric Watson - cheers, dude - kept me going for a few years but there are now so many perennial commercial hazards - Bridgecorp, Blue Chip, Bernie Madoff - heading for court that targeting them becomes somewhat redundant.

Oh, I know there are the usual suspects, the things that make modern life rubbish. (PowerPoint users, pole dancers, Dan Brown fans, conceptual artists) but I am still left short of proper baddies. It is easy for declared lefties. Maybe that is why some people stay stuck in that ideological position. Because, like John Minto still banging on about the same things ad nauseum, it gives you a satisfying enemy.

It's not fair. Lefties have no end of convenient antagonists - there is the vast right-wing conspiracy for a start, the patriarchal hegemony, racists, sexists, Margaret Thatcher, hedge fund managers, rednecks, smokers, Christians, pharmaceutical companies. Funny eh, that a group that is supposed to be preaching tolerance - I'm a lover not a fighter - has so many pricks to kick against.

But on the right-wing end of the spectrum it is harder to know who the baddies are. It would be easier if I could buy into the blogosphere's one-note hatred of lefties - but it looks so mean spirited. And as Bob Jones has pointed out, the left produces radicals who may be wrong-headed but are much more fun than boring Conservatives - it's why the Business Roundtable always invites Chris Trotter to its soirees. Sure, there is Bono, and humourless bearded sandal wearers, and organic lentil eaters who think deodorant gives you cancer. But the problem is, as you get older, instead of seeing things in helpful black and white terms, everything starts to look annoyingly grey.

A lot of Greenies are mental but you can't argue with their well-meaning desire to look after the planet. I am left with Islamic fundamentalists - I do hate them - but I don't come across them on a daily basis in Devonport. When you are young and fancy yourself a bit of an anti-establishment rebel - and who doesn't - it is a doddle to decide if someone is "one of us". Love Robert Fisk? Check. Hate Christine Rankin? Check. But as you get older those battlelines start to look increasingly fuzzy. If not plain dumb.

Francis Fukuyama was right that capitalism had won the overall ideological battle so we're just squabbling over the margins. The endgame is becoming "agnostic" about issues in a whatever-floats-your-boat way. I miss having a feeling of cleansing indignation and the sense you belong to the group which is on the side of all that is righteous and worthy. Maybe that's why there is a trend towards picking any arbitrary target as a hate object - Paul Henry, say, or a scary washing machine. Journalists themselves are a standby.

A Facebook group called "Michael Laws is a twat" has 374 members including a Claudia from Austin, Texas, who admits she knows nothing about him but is happy to up the members' numbers. That's the spirit love. Just hate someone you know nothing about. That's what's going to make the world a better place. Maybe I should start a "I hate Claudia from Austin, Texas" group.

deborah@coneandco.com