“And out come the hate bots.”

By Leo thee Lemon

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Photo by Eric Krull on Unsplash

“And out come the hate bots.”

By Leo thee Lemon

That’s usually how it goes.

You sit down with one idea in your head…

and somehow the internet turns it into something else entirely.

I really wanted to write a nice post honoring my cat who passed away two weeks ago.

Just something quiet.

Something soft.

A small moment of reflection about a creature that shared space in my life for years — the sound of paws on the floor at night, the quiet presence curled up on a chair, the strange comfort animals bring without ever saying a word.

But my last post got so much hate.

And the funniest part?

It was a post about Jesus.

You’d think a message about loving your neighbour wouldn’t trigger a mini digital riot.

But here we are.

I understand the pain a lot of you feel because of the cost of gas in the U.S.

It climbed fast.

Jumping fifty cents last week alone.

That kind of jump doesn’t stay isolated either.

It ripples outward.

You feel it at the pump first, then slowly it creeps into everything else.

Groceries.

Shipping costs.

Products sitting on shelves.

Everything gets just a little bit heavier on the wallet.

The original post started as a reflection on immigration.

Then it naturally moved into something simpler — loving your neighbour the way Jesus talked about it.

That was the idea.

But most people couldn’t get past the first few sentences before firing off their opinions.

Some people didn’t even bother with the ideas at all.

They went straight for spelling mistakes.

Which is always fascinating to me.

A message about compassion turns into a grammar competition.

Safe to say I haven’t been reading my comments today.

My notifications have been sitting there.

Unread.

Meanwhile, I watched the numbers climb.

Likes.

Views.

Subscribers.

All jumping faster than usual.

So clearly some people out there understand what I’m trying to say.

They’re hearing it.

Even if the loudest voices in the comments make it sound otherwise.

It reminds me of something people used to do with apples.

Before refrigeration, people would store apples for the winter by burying them underground.

Not too deep.

Just deep enough so they wouldn’t freeze solid, but would stay cool enough to last through the long months.

You’d gather them in sacks.

Lower them carefully into the earth.

Then months later, when spring finally arrived, you’d dig them back up.

Some apples would be perfect.

Some… not so much.

A few would have spoiled because they weren’t sitting in that perfect “Goldilocks” zone of temperature.

Too warm.

Too cold.

Just wrong.

But when you pull that sack out of the ground and see a few bad apples, you don’t throw away the whole bunch.

You sort them.

You keep the good ones.

You toss the spoiled ones aside.

The moral here is simple.

When you find a few bad apples… you don’t throw away the whole bunch.

I get that helping people in need somehow feels controversial in today’s society.

Everyone says they’re willing to help.

But…

There’s always a “but.”

A small footnote attached at the bottom.

An exception.

A condition.

The comments on that post were so ridiculously hateful that I actually had to block someone who was starting fights with everyone in the thread.

It probably won’t be the last time.

I’ve never personally heard anyone say “death to America.”

Maybe it’s different in the States.

I’m in Canada.

And here, when the word “America” comes up lately, the reaction isn’t usually rage.

It’s more like… discomfort.

A kind of exhausted disgust.

The boycott movement is very strong here in Quebec right now.

Stronger than I’ve ever seen it.

People warn others in the grocery store those products are made in the U.S.

The relief.

Putting the product back now.

No feeling of disgust when you see the label at home later.

It’s actually the first time in my life I’ve heard someone from Quebec openly say they are Canadian.

Usually that identity conversation is… complicated.

But lately there’s been this strange sense of unity.

Across provinces.

Across opinions.

Well… almost everywhere.

Alberta still seems convinced the grass is greener somewhere else.

As you can probably see in the news, much of the world is laughing at the United States right now.

Not lightly either.

There’s a lot of criticism happening.

A lot of frustration.

And much of it centers around the way leadership is handling certain things — especially the refusal to seriously address the Epstein files.

For good reason.

The current leader’s name appears in those documents quite a bit.

In my opinion, more than someone casually connected would normally appear.

That’s not something people forget easily.

Most people who shout “death to America” tend to come from places experiencing something very different.

Places being invaded.

Places where oil, minerals, or strategic control are involved.

Places where power struggles are very real.

If a country refuses to let a larger power extract resources from them, sometimes that pressure escalates.

Economic pressure first.

Then military pressure.

Force tends to appear when diplomacy fails — especially if the powerful side knows it has the strength to back it up.

You may notice I haven’t used the leader’s name or title.

That’s intentional.

For years we’ve all said we must remember the lessons of World War II.

We said that if we ever forgot what happened, history could repeat itself.

And yet lately it feels like those warnings are echoing a little too loudly.

Maybe someday this moment will simply be remembered as a dark chapter.

A strange era.

A cautionary tale.

Maybe history books will summarize it with a single line.

Something like:

“During this period, an American leader behaved in ways that reminded many people of authoritarian regimes. For comparison, see World War II.”

A footnote.

A reference to another moment in history.

History repeating itself in uncomfortable ways.

I realize I went off on a bit of a rant there.

That happens sometimes.

What I really meant to say is this:

You can disagree with my opinions all you want.

That’s fine.

Debate is normal.

But the reality is that most of us are struggling right now.

Financially.

Emotionally.

Socially.

Things feel heavy for a lot of people.

And it would be nice — just once in a while — if we could put the arguments aside long enough to actually work on solutions together.

Instead of tearing each other apart.

Because right now we’re too busy fighting amongst ourselves to recognize the value we each bring to the table.

The failure to understand each other is on both sides.

And that is the biggest problem of all.

“It’s not about being right, it’s about getting it right.”

I ended up writing a post honouring my cat. It reads more like a children’s book. Enjoy:

If this piece did something for you—

made you think, feel, or even just pause for a second—

that’s what I’m trying to build here.

If you have the means, becoming a paid subscriber

helps me keep writing like this consistently.

If not, being here, reading, sharing—

that already means more than you think.

With gratitude,

Leo

Have typewriter, will travel.