The Twin Evils of the Religious Right

The arrogance, bullying, lies, disinformation, torture, spying, deliberate misleading, cynicism, lack of compassion, power grabbing - this administration has committed so many aggregious offenses - why are sowing hatred and doubt among the most pernicious?

Mao ruled China without a KGB or an SS and he did so by unleashing and harnassing the power of hatred. He encouraged and rewarded the unhappiness, resentment, and insecurity that people inevitably feel and channeled it towards a specific group of people and whipped up the intensity of those feeling to the level of hatred. He glorified hatred and called it patriotism. Whenever Mao felt threatened by one group in society, he would urge another group to seek them out, accuse them of crimes against the party, and publicly humiliate and torture them. Students turned on teachers, workers turned on bosses, party members turned on party leaders. Hatred coupled with terror - allowed Mao to rule without an enforcer group.

Republicans encourage resentment, envy, and fear and annoint religion over science, faith over reason, and hatred over love. They have defined patriotism as hating liberals "a vote for a Democrat is a vote for the terrorists". They have blamed all this nation's problems on the "gay, educated, feminist, liberal elite" and the "illegal aliens". They have turned one half of the country against the other in the effort to demonize and dehumanze progressives.

Besides kindling hatred, the other incredibly destructive activity Republicans have been routinely engaged in is spreading false doubts. They assert that because they have doubts about accepted science for religious (evolution) or business (climate crisis) reasons, their doubt is scientifically valid. And they say it so many times, people begin to wonder if what they thought was accepted science, really is. They encourage people to abandon reason for fear - while most of us believed that Saddam Hussein probably didn't have the ability to cause the infamous "mushroom cloud" because of the reports of the weapons inspectors; nonetheless, those two words were repeated over and over again by people who supposedly had the best intelligence in the world at their fingertips, giving many us a reason to doubt what we thought we knew. They spread doubt by spreading lies with the purpose of destroying a person's character - during the Clinton administration so many claims were made about crimes of which the Clinton's were supposedly guilty, that after a while even Democrats began to believe that where there was that much smoke... there must be some fire... even though there really wasn't.

Any leadership that encourages hatred of one group by another is dangerous and morally bankrupt. However, it's almost impossible to overcome hatred masking as patriotism backed by the power of the president and to dispel doubt once established. To do so requires unmasking it and repeatedly calling attention to its true nature. On the other hand, genuine leadership should emphasize the ties that bind us, and our shared values and should look for ways we can work together for the common good.