why don't we love and respect all humans.

I'm sorry you had that happen. Says everything about her and nothing about you.

There are lots of reasons some people become weak and vulnerable to shitty, ghoulish ideologies. And there are lots of people ready to stoke and exploit those weaknesses.

What makes little sense to me is when victims are further victimized. I do understand that folks might post things that they would otherwise never say to face to face, and that anonymity exacerbates the problem, but I wonder that it's such a common thing that it's become "acceptable" behavior and has begun to transfer into RL and what recently happened with mrholmes.  I hope I'm not treading on precarious ground when I say that the popularity of the politics of hate is all but feeding the problem.

To me the problem is that everyone who does not share the values of hate and double morals seems to stay silent in a discussion. In the future I will clearly say stop. What you say is against the Constitution of our country. It's not the values this land is build on and in extreme cases it is against the law.

It's time to say no thank you I am not in your hate camp, I live in the camp healthy.

The true discussion is not politicis. We need to talk about deep worried people. Angst ridden mind's and a too fast changing globalized world.

Hate is not the answer to the problems we have in Western communities. There are many things that need to be fixed. We need a new, healthy deal...

It has grounds in animal instinct to ostracize individuals that would cause harm to the group.  In the animal world, the old, sick and deformed are typically pushed out of the herds/packs even though they are otherwise not to blame for their existence. 

Humans add multiple levels of ego to it by incorporating material things (analogous to plumage) and self-image, etc.

It's not acceptable behavior for modern humans to do this, but it's so prevalent (regardless of the attempts to remove it from society) because it's encoded in our DNA as animals to do this.  We typically know better than to do this and most people take no pleasure from denigrating those who have been unfortunate, but some folks do it because they have poor self esteem and it's easy to pick on disabled people to make themselves feel better about where they exist in society.

Sorry this happened to you mrholmes.  I hope you have a great week this coming week!!!

Unfortunately, a lot of it was taught by people's parents as part of at least a six-century chain. It was how the rich explained away the mistreatment of others to their fellow Christians.

The U.S. came far closer to becoming Nazi in the 1930s than most people realize. We also came far closer to a communist revolution than most people realize. The rich considered the two ways of preventing a communist revolution to be fascism or socialism. Socialism won but there has been a movement to take it away both in Europe and the U.S. since 1945.

I fear many people see the cost of healthcare for others as being a serious threat to their personal privilege.

Or people who simply don't happen to agree with them.

There is a couple of reasons for discriminative behaviour of the ugly kind like in this case.
- If you have nothing to be proud of, you get your self confidence easily by feeling superior to someone just because of them beeing different. May this be another nationality, other religion or no religion, different political opinion, culture, other sex, other sexual orientation, other color of skin, and, of course, handicaps and illnesses and obviously also all kinds of simple optical differences.
For people in the teen age years, who start to define themselves, it is very important set borders, discriminate yourself as a group from others and therefore discriminate others. People often forget this as adults. Because as adult people we should have learned how to deal with differences in a tolerant and mature way.
People who are a bit simpler and underpriviledged or untalented or bored by reason can easily be brought back to childish stereotypical thinking and immature judging someone without even knowing anything about him.
Politicans of all times instrumentalized the "we are better than them / I am better than you" attitude for blaming minorities of all kind for everthing evil that may piss people of in society. Demagogic / populistic is often another word for plainly intolerant asshole behaviour (sorry, but that is how it is IMO). And yes, narcisstic and psychopathic tendencies are always annoying in this regard, but most people who is into this hate culture are not...
(It might be as simple as: If you don't have anything to be proud of, you still can be proud of where you were bore, that you have a distinct skin color, you are raised in a cultural background and so on. All things nobody with a brain should be proud of, because you can only be proud of your own achievements from your personal starting point, development, ethical behaviour, unique thoughts and active understanding and mindful reasoning...

As of the culture of discussion and the "ignore" button....
On FB and other social media I sometimes choose to use it fast. Because there are totally incompatible believes out there, intolerant behaviour, far right and fascistiod mindsets, where discussion is totally useless. Discussing with political fanatics of this kind leads nowhere. it is a bit like trying to discuss with Jehova's Witnesses about atheism. Or even more frustrating and useless... This is what I use these buttons for.
AFAIK I never did this on this board. Actually I was not even aware of this function. Reminds me of what a generally open minded and peaceful place this forum is. Exceptional for the internet...