Opinion: The angry bear wants to eat me. What else is there to understand?

So, I’m standing in the forest and there’s this bear barreling toward me and I’m pretty sure it wants to eat my face. Clearly, the most important thing I can do right now is listen to the bear and try to understand why it feels the way it does, right?
That’s what the people on the edges of the forest are telling me. They’re saying, “That bear that wants to eat your face is misunderstood, and you need to engage with it and figure out what YOU did wrong to make that bear angry.”
To which I say, “Umm … OK. But the thing is, it’s the bear that wants to eat my face, not the other way around. And I’m pretty sure no matter how much I understand about the bear, it’s still going to want to eat my face.”
This bear, you see, has not been shy about its feelings toward me or others like me. It has been angry and growling for years, clearly afraid of anyone different from it, as if some other bear is in its ear shouting, “YOU ARE THE VICTIM HERE!” I once saw the bear wearing a “F— Your Feelings” T-shirt, which was remarkable because I didn’t know bears wore T-shirts, or understood profanity.
Surprises abound these days.
I’ve seen this bear with others, cheering the idea of locking other beings in pens, which is decidedly un-bear-like behavior.
Opinion:Ignore Trump and MAGA’s hate from now until inauguration. Nothing matters.
Given these factors, why are my so-called friends along the edges of the forest counseling me to reckon with the bear that wants to eat my face? What am I supposed to do? Should I ask it about its feelings? Probe the depths of its psyche to find the specific reason it seems so dead set on mauling me?
Based on the decisions it’s been making, I’m confident this bear isn’t doing a huge amount of reasoning at the moment. It’s all id, no ego.
I’ve come across this bear before, of course. The first time, people implored me to understand the bear, and I tried, and that left me with a half-eaten face and little else.
The second time, a nice older man managed to scare the bear off. I noticed when that happened that nobody was asking the bear to understand me, or people like me, or even the old man who scared him off.
In fact, the next time the bear attempts to understand me or any being that thinks differently will be the first time. 
Opinion:I guess Trump won because Democrats forgot to cheat. Oops!
While the old man stood watch, the bear kept being angry and hungry for faces to eat. For reasons I’ll never understand, most started treating the bear with the face-eating problem like it was a normal bear, as if all the anger and the face-eating were nothing to worry about.
Oops. Turns out the angry bear knew a thing or two about manipulating people. 
So here I am, in the forest with the bear bearing down. And all I hear, once again – from the edge-of-the-forest chorus – is that I should do everything in my power to accommodate the bear and understand why it’s dead set on eating my damn face.
No, thank you. The bear is angry. It was angry before it ate my face the first time, it remained angry, it was super angry when the old man chased it off, and it remained angry, and now it has driven the old man away, and it still seems plenty angry.
I don’t see a lot of middle ground between “I don’t want you to eat my face” and “I’m absolutely going to eat your face.” I’m not offering the bear a hand to nibble.
And I’m not running away. You never run away from a bear.
No, I’m going to follow the advice of any good park ranger and stand my ground while making a lot of noise.
The bear might still eat my face. But if it’s going to happen again, I don’t need to investigate its motivations or examine how I may have wronged the bear by … I don’t know … recognizing the world has changed a bit.
The forest chorus keeps thinking there’s something more there than a surface-level lust for face meat. I think that’s giving the bear way too much credit.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on X, formerly Twitter, @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk