I’ve received hate mail since I started writing columns in the late 1990s as the founding editor of the Media Research Center’s CNSNews.com. Then, as now, I shrugged it off as unserious correspondence from unserious people, while taking occasional satisfaction in knowing that one doesn’t take flak unless one is over the target, so to speak.
But it was intriguing when readers would repeatedly send me hate mail. They would go out of their way to find and read things they knew they hated, or at least disagreed with, and then write to me about how much they hated or disagreed with what they sought. In 21st century social media parlance, it’s called hate reading. This is what a Rhode Island man named Robert Dorgan did.
When conservative actor Kevin Sorbo posted on X that a member of Congress with the surname McBride is a man masquerading as a woman, Dorgan replied on the evening of February 15, “keep bashing us. but do not wonder why we Go BERSERK.” Six minutes earlier, if X time stamps are to be believed, Dorgan directed a similar response to right wing broadcaster Alex Jones writing, “stfu Alex dont be so butt hurtt over somebody different. then wonder why trans ppl go fkn BERSERK.”
The next day, Dorgan went to a high school hockey game in Pawtucket and slaughtered his ex-wife and at least one of his own children with a gun.
Dorgan, who went by the nom de guerre Roberta Dorgano in his X posts, is the latest example of transgender ideology gone wrong. Citing Pawtucket Police Chief Tina Goncalves, WPRI-TV reported, “Dorgan also went by the name ‘Roberta,’ and court documents show his gender identity played a role in multiple family disputes over recent years.”
The television station’s coverage included news that Dorgan told local police six years ago that he’d undergone sex-reassignment surgery in 2020 and shortly thereafter, “Dorgan’s then-wife Rhonda Dorgan filed for divorce.” Additional reporting further noted, “Under grounds for divorce, Rhonda initially wrote, ‘gender reassignment surgery, narcissistic + personality disorder traits.’”
The divorce filing, a document typically prepared by an experienced divorce attorney, took care to list clinical ailments described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Whether Dorgan’s hate reading of social media had anything to do with the events of February 16 is something we’ll never know. And because social media and the practice of hate reading are relatively new phenomena, there’s not a lot of research available on the topic. But a quick perusal of Google AI provides some plausible clues about it.
One theory is that people hate read things because doing so can release dopamine and adrenaline, stimulating something akin to an outrage ‘high.' Another theory involves what psychologists call downward comparison, a sense of moral superiority over people or ideas with which the reader vigorously disagrees. A third possibility involves insecure people who need to validate their position on an issue, no matter how demonstrably wrong, by reinforcing a self-identity through angrily consuming an opposing view.
Whatever the circumstances, reasonable people can conclude that hate reading is probably not healthy and something to be avoided in the interest of personal mental hygiene. I’m not saying we ought not read things with which we disagree; professional people do it every day as a matter of course. Personally, I have read The Communist Manifesto cover-to-cover at least three times, not because I agree with Karl Marx and Frederich Engels or because I hate them, but because I want to know how they think and what they taught, and correlate it with current events. It’s doubtful this approach is what motivated Robert Dorgan’s hate reading in the hours preceding his rampage.
It’s difficult to enumerate the psychological pathologies present in transgender ideology, and among those who embrace and support it. To strenuously hold such ideas about oneself in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary is the very definition of a clinical delusion. For so-called trans allies - like Minnesota Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan, spotted wearing a “Protect Trans Kids” t-shirt emblazoned with a large knife - it may be a misplaced sense of empathy for a confused youngster whose family and friends lack the courage to advise them to seek counseling, choosing instead the easier path of validating a destructive lie.
The tragedy at that Pawtucket hockey rink Monday will forever hold some mystery; Dorgan took his own life before being apprehended so we’ll never know what triggered him. But the brief interval between his hate reading of social media and the crime may be more than coincidental.
At a bare minimum, it makes the case for eschewing the habit of deliberately seeking that which enrages us. Shakespeare, Vonnegut, or Austen might be viable alternatives to the scribblings of those we despise simply because they’re right.