Red meat for the dogs. Hatred.
Animals don't hate, and we're supposed to be better than them.
As silly as it may seem to say, something (well, a lot of things) has been really bothering me about the current blather coming out of Republican quarters.
It is not that a conservative party, although it is unclear if that is what the GOP is anymore, would have nothing to say, but it's not saying it. I'm not hearing from any William F. Buckley's or George F. Will's on the merits of conservatism. George Weigel isn't breaking through to the audience. Politician wise, I'm not hearing the voice of a Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater being taken seriously. I was hearing a bit from Mitt Romney, but he's stepping away from the podium. Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie are still there, but they're not making it above the din.
I am hearing from a lot of candidates, local and national, who speak with short invectives, however. I won't bother with the Boeberts or Greene's but even locally it's pretty upsetting.
Somebody acting in anonymity (but with enough in the way of time and resources available to purchase signs supporting their blog) is accusing people of being "RINO's", as if they can define half the state's GOP that way based on their own assessment. The head of Wyoming's Freedom Caucus and at least one of its members calls Republicans they disagree with and the Democrats the "Uniparty". Our congressman purports to have knowledge that there's a "place in Hell for those who pursue policies that are intended to increase the price of food, energy, and housing" as if anyone anywhere has a policy that actually is intended to do any of those things.
And then there's Trump.
Ceterum (autem) censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Cato.
Trump rages against his opponents. They're debased, insance, Marxists, fascists, and the like. It recalls the radical statements of earlier demagogues.
Here he stops at nothing, and in his vileness he becomes so gigantic that no one need be surprised if among our people the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.
Rather, it's campaigning on almost one thing, and one thing alone.
Hitler, Mein Kampf.
Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.
Stalin.
And what is being expressed is hatred.
Hatred.
And that, more than anything else, is what unites the GOP increasingly with the spirit of fascism, and ironically enough, Communism as well.
It's not that conservatives or populists have nothing to say. Rather, they don't say it much, and only rarely as sort of a battle cry. Instead, their public image is based on hate. It's not all of us together, and we must find a way, listen to my ideas, but rather, it's us against them, they're vile, and must be destroyed.
Trump isn't arguing any policy positions. Instead, he spews hatred. His opponents, legal and political, are mentally incompetent, deranged, fat, etc. etc. He doesn't appeal to logic, but emotion, and the emotion he appeals to is hatred. People need to fear his opponents, as they are Der Untermensch, i.e., subhuman.
Indeed, the entire yapping class appealing to the populist in the GOP, which is now a populist party, appeals to fear and hatred in a radical way. The scary left wing intelligentsia is going to insert itself into the schools, or vaccines, or whatever, and turn us all into drones, and your sons and daughters into debased freaks.
Authoritarian movements that have little else going for them other than fear have always behaved this way. If you didn't support the Ku Klux Klan, Catholics are going to take over and give the country to the Pope and black men are going to rape your daughters. If you don't support the Nazi's, the Communist Slavic Jewish hoards are going to take over and rape your daughters. If you don't support the Communists, the big monied (probably Jewish, they always get the short end of the stick in this stuff) are going to control everything and starve your daughters. It's not our ideas against theirs, but rather us against them, and in the end, they must be destroyed.
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
Trumpist populations tell us that Democrats are deranged to the extent of being Untermenschen. They must be destroyed. It's gotten so bad, that to merely call somebody a "RINO" is the equivalent of calling somebody subhuman. An entire Wyoming website, which moderate Republicans asked to unmask itself, exists only to do that, as if calling somebody a RINO in the context in which the position that seem to determine that would have left you out of the GOP mainstream in the pre Trump era, is preposterous. But it happens now all the time. No Democratic or moderate Republican position can be considered, as they are the hideous Untermenschen.
Indeed, hate has become such the defining factor, that all of the former standard which conservatives adhered to have gone by the wayside, although frankly they started to as long ago as Ronald Reagan. "Family values" are to be defended, but divorces and personal sexual misconduct mean nothing, because as long as one is a populist, your infidelities are irrelevant. Biden is corrupt because he's a Democrat. Trump is pure because he's a Republican. I'm not saying anything about either man, but defining their morality based upon their party is all the more that needs to be done.
I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear.
Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
Cato urged that Carthage be destroyed as a detraction. Hatred never serves humanity, but in the end serves one man.
If all a politician or public figure has to offer is invective, they should be disregarded. Moreover, if that's principally what they have to offer, they should be cast aside.
Hate isn't a policy. It's a vehicle, more often than not, for the person publically spewing it.
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