The Demonization of the Opposition

POSTED BY: SoupCatcher
UPDATED: Sunday, August 1, 2004 20:50
VIEWED: 35776
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SIGNYM

Saturday, July 17, 2004 1:10 AM

Hey "I just call them as I see them".

Sound familiar?

You've accused me of whining, snideness, word games, indecision, psuedo-intellectualism, calling YOU paranoid, and a bunch of other things so I figured- why not use your tactics? Since you seem to knock people upside the head with a 2X4, I thought maybe you'd understand your own style better! Did it work?

You haven't answered my questions. Nowhere have you unearthed a post where I called your concerns paranoid. You have not shown how Cheney, Rumsfeld or anyone else has made us measureably more secure by their actions. I could point out the errors in your previous post (the total amount of electricity being produced in Iraq is slightly LESS than under Saddam, the amount going to Bagdhad is much less- these are CPA and contractor figures not mine) and you know what you'd do?

You'd shift the argument, just like you're trying to do now. You'd accuse me of something-or-other, like you just did, and come up with untrue information- like you just did. You'd refuse to respond DIRECTLY to anything I posted (in your up/down world, the one thing you can't seem to do is come up with a straight answer) and then re-post the same opinions that we heard in the previous couple of dozen posts.

Drakon, redeem yourself. Did I, or did I not, call your concerns "paranoid"? If you can't answer that simple question with either a yes or a no and provide evidence if the answer is "yes", then what in god's name is happening inside your head?

DRAKON

Saturday, July 17, 2004 1:23 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Proportional is a valid concept in 'the real world'.

True enough. Some things are more important than others. Some things, not so much. I think you are confusing the process with the end product here, Which is probably a valid point.

But again, I don't see the utility of your "shades of grey approach. Did I miss that rebuttal, or was all this talk of potentometers it?

Quote:
(When DOES a human individual come into existance, Drakon?)

You put me in a bit of a bind here, since you already chastised me for repeating myself. As I have stated before, in this very thread, from Wednesday, July 07, 2004 - 02:30

Quote:
The purpose of a law against murder is that serves as a means of protecting folks against murder. We have exceptions, such as self defense. And we also recognize legally death as a result of unintended consequences, and call that "Manslaughter". But to the victim, it does not matter. They are still dead.

I don't know when life begins. You are killing something. It does not have the characteristics of a tumor, a frog, or any other living entity. It will someday, if everything goes normally become a infant human. When is that magic dividing line between life and not life, between human and not human, I don't really know.

One side says at conception, the other says at birth. If the latter is wrong, then abortion is murder. If the former is wrong, then it still becomes a baby, a human, later in life. So again, to err on the side of caution seems prudent.

Quote:
So I'm back to my original assessment of you. This is not an 'oops' kind of thing, you deliberately disable honest discussion.

Let me see if I get this right. Because I do not respond to each and every point in a timely fashion, as you desire, you judge me dishonest. You see that as the only possible conclusion. You chastise me for repeating myself and then demand an answer to a question that I have already answered. While it is apparent that you missed that answer, I am going to refuse to return the favor and mirror your judgement.

Now, lets talk about purpose. You see, you have to ask yourself what are you trying to do here. Is it to convince me of the correctness of your views? To play to the audience? In either case, I think you will find calling your opponent dishonest, in the manner you have chosen is not going to work.

Quote:
As far as I'm concerned, you and I have nothing to discuss.

Then why bother?

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

RUE

Saturday, July 17, 2004 2:04 AM

edited b/c computer glitch

DRAKON

Saturday, July 17, 2004 8:36 AM

Yeah sorry about that. Fixed now.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

RUE

Sunday, July 18, 2004 12:07 AM

bump

SOUPCATCHER

Sunday, July 18, 2004 1:07 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier
What came to mind were hate and naivete. The lefties are nothing if not kind and gentle and compassionate, aren't they? And if you call a conservative naive, he'll just laugh and blow smoke in your face, right?

After 9/11 the left really pushed their own agressive rage way way down, and projected it on the right. I think that fueled a lot of the whole, "We deserved it" rhetoric that was flying around before a lot of the families in New York even knew if their loved ones were still alive. It was spooky. So I think a lot of formerly left leaning folk out there kinda moved away from the left. They felt their rage and owned it instead of burrying it and a lot of them supported the "War on Terror" because it spoke to them.

What I keep hearing very loudly and often from the right is that liberals "LIVE IN A FANTASY WORLD!!!" But at the same time, and to a larger and larger degree it seems, the right live in the imagination of their President. If Bush says it, it must be true. Period. I don't hear a lot of rightwing skepticism about the right. Even Denise Miller, snarkiest man on Planet Earth, doesn't have a mean thing to say about George! But without skepticism we lose our ability to discern truth from illusion and are likely to swallow anything our trusted source hands us.

So we get liberals who are full of rage and painfully naive conservatives. Hijinks ensue...

I read your post, HK, and got really excited because you introduced a new element into the discussion of demonization: projection. Then the dualism debate was quickly brought back online and there hasn't seemed to be a response. You raise a valid point: that we tend to hate in others what is part of our own personality but that we don't want to acknowledge. And this is probably a component reason for the increase in demonization. But I'm not convinced that this is the predominant reason. (Of course, I'm not convinced that there is a dominant reason. I lean more towards the explanation that there are a variety of reasons with varying levels of importance - just like most real world problems - which is why I was hoping for a large number of possible explanations rather than the three we have come up with).

I shaved off my beard for you, devil woman!

RUE

Sunday, July 18, 2004 2:19 AM

I used to have an intimate knowledge of Canadian politics. I don't know how things are today. Back then it was civil and respectful, even when hotly contested. One example is during Canada's annual conventions to "bring the Constitution home". Up until 1982 Canada's Constitution was the British North America Act which had been passed by the British Parliament (in 1867?). Anyway, for Canada to have its own home-grown constitution, they needed to ammend, vote on, and pass it. Which they tried to do every year for I don't know how long. In 1982 Alberta (tar sands, oil) wanted ammendments about provincial control of resources. And Quebec wanted to separate from Canada (still does I think). There were some other provincial disputes which I don't recall. No unanimous agreement could be reached. I still remember hearing Trudeau's 'deep divisions' speech at the end of the convention. But he wanted to leave a political legacy, and rather than sign the bill on a unanimous vote (as was thought should be done), he signed it on a majority vote. It stunned the hell out of everyone. But it got the Constitution home.

Something like that would rip the US apart.

In Britain, they might still even use the phrase 'loyal opposition' to describe the party(ies) not currently in power.

I do seriously think the US has a system which leads to two (and only two) major parties, and feedback that's so delayed it doesn't count. And that, I still think, leads to a level of struggle not seen in other places, and therefore demonization. IMHO.

Or, maybe it's just a US cultural quirk.

SIGNYM

Sunday, July 18, 2004 1:23 PM

"Demonization" occurs pretty frequently in politics- unfortunately often as a prelude to war or coup. Hutus demonized the Tutsis, Nazis demonized the Jews, and USA demonized the Germans in WWI ("Huns", barbarians, "Fritz") and Bismarck deomonized the French, Italians, and Austrians.

What I observe is that demonization is not usually a spontaneous occurence but is driven by the ruling elite to further their agenda. The demonization is picked up and magnified by a fearful population. (Gulf of Tonkin attack, Iraq WMD, "drug running" in Panama)

Unfortunately demonization WORKS. It's an effective tool in a population that is panicked and economically unsettled and poorly educated about the world and its own elite. Nothing causes a band of baboons to clump together faster than tha call of "leopard!"

I find that the right-wing is doing most of the demonizing and that the left-wing has been very slow to respond. "The Federalist" and Max Boot and other right-wing publications are replete with rhetorical tricks- I could fill page after page of examples that should turn everyone's stomach on sheer sleaze. If you really want to see some typical examples I'll post them a bit later. The left wing, and the ex-generals, ex-Cabinet members, ex-ambassadors, ex-intelligence agents who criticize the Bush admin feel they have to prove their contentions, so they bring 19,000 pages of documents leaked secret memos and direct observation and videotapes and pictures and just get blown off. (See, that's not enough proof.)

SIGNYM

Sunday, July 18, 2004 1:45 PM

Drakon, I see that your post isn't here. I'm going to assume that your rhetoric is driven by honest panic and not cold-blooded manipulation. Take a deep breath, come back and let's talk.

HKCAVALIER

Sunday, July 18, 2004 6:00 PM

Thank you Signy for making the connection between demonization and wartime pathology. War is of course the ultimate expression of political demonization: the enemy deserves death. The enemy has "abdicated its humanity."

Demonization is central to the training of any army. The soldier mustn't see her enemy as human, she mustn't identify with their suffering. That's why Michael Moore showing children flying kites in Baghdad is considered propaganda by the Bushites. It undermines the demonization necessary for us to tolerate a war. Same with the demonized prisoners at Abu Ghraib. They were all terrorists deserving of the worst, right? Well, no, many were simply taken off the street "more or less at random." Whenever this discrepancy is brought to the attention of the Bushites, they fall silent.

The secret evil in teaching our troops and our civilians to demonize the enemy is that it works both ways: not only does it help us to tolerate the destruction of the enemy, but it helps us to tolerate the destruction of our own troops. Convince us that the enemy is evil and dangerous enough and we will dutifully offer up our sons and daughters for years at a time. I think it was Orwell who said that war is perpetrated by the governing elite upon its own people.

Demonization also insures that abuses like the rapes and murders that we are hearing about at Abu Ghraib will happen. It is a natural, almost mechanical consequence of denial and projection: you will become what you hate.

There is a saying in therapeutic circles: what we don't forgive, we will repeat. If my father was abusive to me and I grow up hating him for it, then when I become a father I will find myself with the same unexamined fury and desperation as he; to my certain horror, I will have no tools to keep me from repeating my father's violence upon my own children. But if I do the work of grieving the pain and loss of my own childhood and grow to understand the doubtless painful and ungrieved circumstances of my father's upbringing, I can come to genuinely forgive him and actually learn from his mistakes and end the cycle of violence.

Forgiveness cannot happen over night, or by a simple act of will. We must go through the pain and chaos of grief first. It was perhaps innevitable that we would go to war immediately after 9/11, as a race, we're still pretty unconscious and full of denial, but the desire for vengence fades. We are beginning, I think, to awaken to our own loss of life and humanity over there and we, as a people, want out.

The best definition of evil that I've been able to come up with is simply this: the denial of one's own rage and hate. The same work is done when we ascribe our hatred to God. Saying it is Gods will that we slaughter the enemy is another form of denial. To the degree that we deny our personal darkness, even our capability to commit evil, we are able to perpetrate the most horrendous crimes, because we keep their criminality secret even from ourselves.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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