You have it all figured out.
You don’t have to care
if they hate you.
You no longer
have to fear them.
My, the beauty of it.
The genius.
To have the game beat.
To no longer have to care.
To no longer have to fear.
All you have to do,
the only thing,
the one and only thing,
you have to do,
is hate them first.
.
Cold, rainey, really cold. Would it be a different poem if the last line read: “is hate yourself first.” ??
“Love your enemies. It will worry them to death.”–Dave Gardner.
Good question JT. Thanks. Hmm, well, I don’t know but I can imagine it might be close to the same poem. But I’m thinking that those who adopt this kind of worldview are probably motivated by some kind of fear and at the base of that fear might be, as you suggest, a certain amount of self-loathing. Maybe it’s a chicken or the egg question, but my guess is that the self-loathing comes first, then the fear, then the hatred of others as, more or less, a defense mechanism. At least that’s the way I see it in my own life in my more misanthropic moments (I don’t have many of them, I am happy to report, but there are times…)
For some reason, a song by Bob Seger popped into my head at the first reading of this poem. “Still the Same”
Yes. The defense mechanisms. Layer after layer of facade to protect the soft gooey parts. Perhaps we should swap some of our awareness for armadillo hide… 
Like the saying about light and dark, is hate the absense of --not the opposite of-- love?
lhw - AKA: The Straight-faced Clown AKA: M.C. Tape-Hiss
I think depending on the circumstances the opposite of love is either fear or indifference. Hate I see as being a consequence of fear.