Enemy Mine

Psychological research is fuzzier than most. Exes and ohs are less rigid, numbers not easily applicable. Still, it often produces ideas worth chewing. Here's an example which, happily, comports with a central belief of mine:

A research team led by social psychologist Daniel Sullivan of the University of Kansas reports on four studies that suggest people are “motivated to create and/or perpetually maintain clear enemies to avoid psychological confrontations with an even more threatening chaotic environment.” When you place their findings in the context of the many threats (economic and otherwise) people face in today’s world, the propensity to turn ideological opponents into mighty monsters starts to make sense.

Of course I'd like to think that it doesn't apply to me: my warnings about the RWS™ are accurate, whereas their railings about Obama, as well as those of the tea bagging conspiracy theorists, are insane. Rather than giving me comfort, rather than helping me avoid angst, my feelings about those guys are deeply disturbing. Still, it's possible it's a human thing.

Deliberately or not, governments often seem to understand the need for scary enemies. Traveling in the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, I concluded as much as I observed the ubiquitous demonization of the US. (In that case, I intuited that it was because their socialist paradise was a delusion, and the only way to make it -- and its people -- work was to create an existential enemy.) In the disproportionate reaction to terrorism coming from the right side of our own political spectrum, I hear echoes. It's not unlike the response to communism a few decades ago. Diverting attention and energies from power-grabs and oppression, cranking up a perpetual enemy works wonders. Right, Dick?

I wish we had the ability to see ourselves in terms of our frailties and failings. I wish we could get a little more meta, and recognize how our fears and needs enter into, distort, and color our beliefs. If so, might we rise above, at least a little, the hyperpartisanship that is destroying us? Might we see what we are doing to ourselves in giving a platform to, and following, such damaged souls as Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly? Could we understand the unworthy -- if human -- need behind it?

Well, people might say, I'm demonizing those guys as much as they demonize me. I'm just proving the point of the study at the center of this post. Am I, though? Is it all of a piece? Is there no difference between my point of view and that of Glenn Beck? Do people who think like I do have the same blinders as those who revere Glenn? Is paranoia the same as pointing out reality? I don't think so. He's crazy. I'm not.

But maybe I'm not meta enough.

Beyond Dangerous

I suppose it was predictable. Given the slavish promotion of everything Bush, and the vitriolic and fact-free attacks on Barack Obama during the election, it's entirely unsurprising that the right-wing attack machine would be in permanent scream mode after he was elected. But I admit to being taken aback by the level it's reached of late, and the sense of danger it's creating. Even some of the wrongest of the right are worried.

See, the thing these horrible hacks don't seem to understand, while they weep at how they love their country, is that their country is a democracy. With a constitution. People vote. Things change. When they thought they were in charge, and that their opposition was not only meaningless but undeserving of respect, they were just fine with the idea of democracy. Just fine with the voice of the people as long as the voice was theirs, and theirs alone.

What exactly does Glenn Beck love about this country? Its trees? Obviously, not its laws. Or more than half its people.

If you disagree with what's going on in your democracy, what you do is organize (every hear of "community organizers?"), you get better candidates, you get better ideas, you get out the vote. And then you let the chips fall where they may. Like what happened in November. That's what's to love about America. But not for those guys. Bullies don't work that way. Bullies don't work with ideas, they work with intimidation, because they really don't have ideas. They don't love anything but their sense of entitlement. And their deep-seated insecurities.

Sore losers are not unprecedented, but I think maybe their influence, nowadays, is. These guys could never imagine losing; they can't handle being in the minority, and they're beyond embittered. They're enraged to the point of disbelief, of lying, of seeing evil wherever they look, rationalizing violence against those that beat them in the battle of ideas. It's unfathomable to them. It's deeply personal; their fragile egos are fractured. And they have an audience. Once empowered, now distraught, their devoted listeners are the same. It's religion. The pagans are at the gate; truth and righteousness are threatened. They reject my world view, my emotional support system, therefore they must be destroyed, for the sake of my self-deception. Literally.

I'm not exaggerating. In the deeply disturbed, this sort of rage is deeply rooted. Reactionary beliefs carefully constructed to keep away self-doubt, like religion, must be defended to the death, because without them, their fears become real; their sense of inferiority and persecution are revealed. Really: you can't watch Bill O'Reilly or Glenn Beck without seeing seriously damaged people (or, at best, complete charlatans). But there's a wide audience for guys like them, and for Hannity and Limbaugh and Malkin and Coulter and Ingraham and Savage and Bachmann. They're embittered, feeling put-down, disenfranchised, and to such people a complex world, not amenable to easy answers, is very menacing. Their wall of no discomfort has been removed, with nothing to replace it but anger and hatred and a powerful sense of aggrievement. If the world has rejected them, well, at least Glenn hasn't. He weeps for them. Rush speaks for them. And they're ready to rise up at his call. Like wounded animals, they're dangerous.

So we see sh*t like this. And this. This. Combined with this. And this. And they lie, like this. Now Billo is claiming Obama wants a one-world government. I'd be laughing, except with the crazies out there, whipped into paranoid panic, egged on by these nutjobs, what you get is this. Or THIS. And the cop-killer in Pittsburgh evidently believed the constant right-wing crazy myth that Obama was coming for his guns. Crazy, hearing voices? Yeah. On the radio and on Fox. There simply is no equivalent on the left, not lunacy and paranoia to this degree.

A commenter recently told me I give these guys too much ink (pixels, I guess), too much credence. I don't think so: they need more scrutiny and thought. I think they are irresponsible and extremely dangerous. Democracy necessarily includes folks like these; but in this environment, I'm not sure it can survive them. Not, most certainly, if they have anything to say about it.

[Update: I think many are seeing the same thing, and trying to explain it. The right wing crazies are having a really hard time dealing with reality, and it's coming out in all sorts of ways.]

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