The three other liberals here in southern New Mexico often remark to me, usually with a shudder, how frightening it is to consider a Trump or Carson presidency — or whichever other right-wing lunatic happens to be rising in the presidential preference polls.
What’s really frightening is the hatred that has saturated the electorate, and accounts for the popularity of the Republicans’ thinly-disguised racism, contempt for non-Christians and their arrogant dismissal of the impoverished and dispossessed as creatures less than human.
The war-mongering profiteers who have taken over our country despite former President Eisenhower’s warning against them understand that the wars that sustain their infinite greed require the manufacture of a Great Evil for the masses to fear and hate.
Orwell depicts this brilliantly, of course, in “1984.”
I grew up being taught to hate The Hun but especially The Jap. For World War II we interred, impoverished and mistreated far more Japanese-Americans than German-Americans or Italian-Americans. The non-Christian yellow dogs were far easier to hate.
After World War II the new Great Enemy was the Soviet Union. We cowered in our bomb shelters during the cold war knowing that if we let down our guard for a millisecond those atheistic communists would slaughter our women and children and burn down our Christian churches.
When St. Ronnie Reagan tore down the Berlin wall and broke up the Soviet Union, single-handedly, the way Erroll Flynn sank the Spanish Armada, we had to look around for new Great Enemies.
Atheistic Commie China was handy but then Dick (I Am Not a Crook) Nixon did ping-pong diplomacy and big trade money was at stake so we had to cool it a bit with the Yellow Menace crap.
Muslims! Islam! Now there was a Great Enemy you could drum up some real hatred for, especially if, like Iraq, they had weapons of mass destruction they were ready to use on our kindergartens and hospitals. Had to fight ‘em there or we’d be fighting ‘em here. Same for Iran. Libya. Yemen. Afghanistan. Pakistan. An endless supply of Great Enemies for our staggeringly profitable policy of endless war.
But you’ve got to be taught to hate and fear and sometimes it helps to have enemies near.
Wetbacks! Black people! Brown people!
Trump: The Black Lives Matter guy “needed to be roughed up.” (Translation: Things will settle down around here when we put Uppity Niggers back in their place.)
No Syrian refugees! No more “free stuff” for people of any color. Build a wall along the border. Make “them” register so we can build a data base. Keep the refugees out (even though it was United States policy that created the refugee crisis). Support your police (especially when they shoot unarmed black guys in hoodies with their arms raised in the universal gesture of surrender). Put more guns in the hands of more white Americans so they can Keep Our Neighborhoods Safe!
In a recent poll, nearly half the respondents said the United States has a major racism problem. Highest percentage ever recorded on the question.
Yes we do. In fact, as a people, we ooze racism from every pore. We love it when our blathering white politicians threaten to bust heads, kick ass and “rough ‘em up.” Doesn’t matter the color, as long as it ain’t white heads or asses we’re kickin’.
America the Beautiful.
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