We've all heard or read about over-the-top rhetoric from such wackos as Savage, Coulter, etc. You may even have read some of the excellent work of David Neiwert on
eliminationist rhetoric.
As the traditional press is stepping up instances of comparing Democratic and liberal activists with Osama and other terrorists, it may not be far behind when internal enemies are targeted with the same rhetorical vitriol.
What does it look like from a personal level? What can cause people to think or speak like this?
More on the flip...
It's pure and simple brainwashing. It is a suspension of rationality and a succumbing to raw emotional manipulation.
It is fear, it is hate that is spawned by that fear. As Neiwert mentions in his discussions about this rhetoric, it can be short step between such declarations of violence against broad swaths of people to actual violence.
There's a hard-core winger at work. He's normally a pretty nice guy. Always has a "Hi" and has even admitted that perhaps you can be a Christian and still accept evolution as an explanation for the way the world works. (all of the recent statements by the Vatican really helped on that point) But he has so completely bought the emotional mind-fucking the Republican, neo-con party has been pumping out non-stop, that he actually wrote this to me today.
The way to end the war on terror is to fight the war on terror, based on the rules the enemy has laid down. Total annihilation of the enemy. This means due [sic] what ever it takes, including bombing the hell out of all places where the enemy is KNOWN to be or HAS BEEN or PROBABLY is. If you are a neighbor of Osama Bin Laden and he is visiting your house, then your ass is grass when we drop 2, 3, 4 bombs on your house.
The left would call for Bush's impeachment if he said this to the world. "As of this moment, we cease the war on terror and let bygones by bygones. HOWEVER, if there is even 1 American casualty anywhere in the world because of any terrorist activity, we will kill every terrorist and every family member of that terrorist and every friend of that terrorist and every member of their family. Period. Their DNA will be eliminated from the face of the earth. If you support terrorism in any way, you and your entire family will be destroyed."
How do you respond to such fear, such vitriol, such hate? The only real reponse I could make was to point out that there's a small problem of identifying who actually is a terrorist. And if you decide to just indiscriminately wipe out whole populations because there are terrorists that live there, you'd have to use wide-spread nuclear weaponry, which would only prompt the rest of the world to retaliate and destroy our country. So, it's not a winning strategy, to say the least.
The only really effective way to get this many people to buy into this level of fear-induced paranoia and hyperbole is through brainwashing, propoganda, emotional manipulation, what you will.
I never thought I'd see a day when my co-worker's words would not only be seen as acceptable rhetoric to be used in a common social setting, but not seem wildly outside the rhetoric of public political figures.
How do you respond to such thoughts? How do you point out the inhumanity and futility of such courses of action while still maintaining a level of decorum necessary in a place of business? Granted, I feel he's violated the decorum by his statements, but with similar statements being made regularly by right-wing media, how do you just call him a dumb-fuck neaderthal (no offence meant to neaderthals) with the human sensitivity and sense that God gave a flea? (no offence to fleas intended) How do you counter such fear and emotion with reason? Can you? If not, what do you do?
Plane Crazy