None of us are born to hate.  We come into this world innocently, having no concept of “us versus them”. We are born with survival instincts of course, and they soon mature enough to make us wary of our older brother or perhaps a mean toddler in daycare.  Further along, our ability to “hate” begins to set in – whether it’s high school rivalries, noisy neighbors, the in-laws, or Bill Belichick.  But these are really more like annoyances that are easily settled over a cold beer or two.

Politics is a slightly different story and a cold beer or two could easily make things worse. Politics create policy and policies guide our society – quality of life, availability of opportunities, and even personal safety are all linked back to politics. Because of this, our political leanings reflect our idea of survival and a viable future. Opposing political views can be seen as a threat and can easily direct our ire to people that we don’t even know. Our parents often get us going down this path as they bestow us (intentionally or not) with their hand-me-down political biases at the kitchen table.  Unfortunately, once we dip our toe in political animosity we begin to subject ourselves more to the readily available influence of others (vs. our own experiences and understanding) and this makes us vulnerable to their agenda and the pushing of their causes.  All too often they wrap their agenda in rhetoric that portrays theirs as ours – and it rarely is. The pushing of political agendas almost always includes half-truths, exaggerations, flat-out lies, and manipulation. Political agendas also typically include an “us vs. them” component which creates resentment as two sides push for opposing policies. We are human and we are malleable and the steady drumbeat of divisive messaging can take its toll.

For these and many other reasons, the Republican and Democratic parties are each collection points for much that divides us, and increasing inflammatory rhetoric (from many corners) is pushing the two parties (and us) further and further apart. The graph below shows the recent levels of hate between Republicans and Democrats. A sudden increase in our hate appeared around the year 2001 and has been ramping up ever since.  There were many things from that time period that we could blame: SCOTUS handing George W. Bush the election, the drum-beat of war after 9/11, a questionable Iraq war, the John Roberts Supreme Court expanding corruption, President Obama’s election(s), the creation of the Tea Party, minority rule, an obstructionist congress, and of course economic disparity and economic difficulties for many of us.  But what probably did the most damage was the added noise and divisive messaging that started to come along with these things – it is no coincidence that this same time period saw the drastic rise in social media and politically motivated news outlets on the web and on cable television. Much credit for today’s divisiveness goes to Fox News and other conservative news outlets as well as the never-ending stream of conservative pundits that show up everywhere – their misleading and destructive rhetoric is well documented and the idea that “both sides do it” is provably false.  Facebook is another major contributor where people from around the world can brazenly and easily manipulate millions of us with a few keystrokes and a button click.

So, things happened, events were exaggerated, policies and ideologies were misrepresented, heartstrings were pulled, emotions were played with, and we have been convinced to hate each other. The graph only goes to 2016 – imagine what it looks like now…

Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America’s Great Divide – By Marc Hetherington, Jonathan Weiler

Those heartstrings and emotions of ours truly do make us vulnerable and they are often purposefully used against us. History has shown that there are always plenty of folks out there who shrewdly use fear, deceit, and divisive language to herd the rest of us around as they please. They are quite good at creating a “threat – haven” environment where they first create the illusion that others are threatening our way of life or even our survival and then they create the illusion that they have a safe haven for us and that only they can understand us and protect us.  These folks understand that fear is one of our strongest and most primitive emotions and therefore one of our weakest points, and they play it, and us, perfectly to get what they want out of us. What follows is a general overview of some of the psychological tendencies that we all share and how they can be and have been, used to exploit us.

When we are exposed to significant threats (real or otherwise), we tend to “run home to momma” and instinctively retreat to things that we find familiar or comfortable – our core social foundations such as family, home, tradition, nostalgia, heritage, religion, sports, music, and probably even peanut butter sandwiches. These core social foundations are extremely important to we humans because, for deep psychological reasons that are well beyond the scope of this article, they subconsciously provide both meaning and purpose for our existence, and holding on to them helps us to feel safe and that we are an important part of society.  Unfortunately, when we are being herded along by others, these are the very things that we are persuaded to believe are being attacked and this makes us subconsciously translate this non-existent attack into an assault against the very meaning of our existence – and we don’t handle that well.  

When fear or threat cause us to recoil from the greater society, we reduce the scope of who we choose to associate with and the ideas we choose to accept. Fear tends to distort our judgment of others – making us invent faults in those that are different from us and disregard the faults of those that are similar to us. In fact, there is ample research that shows that, when threatened, we subconsciously back away from anyone that is different than us and that we can become indifferent to any harm that comes to them. In some cases, we will even lash out at them. It is important to point out that we do all of this even when we don’t consciously view them as threats, they only need to be different – scary stuff.

As we withdraw from “the others”, we are greatly relieved when we learn (or are told) that there are others who are suffering along with us.  Even without physically interacting with them – just knowing they exist – gives us solace, camaraderie, and a much-needed sense of belonging. All of this is, of course, exacerbated by the internet and social media which creates a 24/7/365 virtual back porch where our new-found group interactions bring us validation, amplification, and even expansion of the fears and the threats that brought us together.  Being a member of a group, even if vaguely labeled as “not those others”, provides a sense of safety. 

We are especially vulnerable during periods of economic stress or social unrest where many of us “fail” economically or don’t fit in, causing us to start losing hope for the future.  This can easily happen in societies that determine your worthiness based on your financial success, fame, and possessions.  This results in deeply wounded egos and self-esteem that are easily exploited. It is during such times that our desperation can be taken advantage of and we can be led to believe that certain people and ideas are coming after our jobs, our children’s future, our communities, our Democracy, our Liberty, and even the “American way”.  When we are handed someone to blame for our woes then our ego and self-esteem are improved – we really like that and we really really like those who returned our dignity and value to us. While these folks are providing us with a ready-made enemy they are also pretending that they are one of us and that only they can understand us and can protect us. After enough of this messaging, we no longer care what is said, we only care about who said it, and we become eager to support their cause, their agenda, and their policies (no matter what they are) and gleefully vote against our own interests and those of our families and our country.

But the kicker in all of this is that those who are exploiting us in our weakened state are the exact same folks who have tilted the playing field against us in the first place.  The people we are blindly following are precisely the people who slowly created the widespread economic disparity that destroyed our future and slowly crushed our self-esteem. These are the people who are taking everything and breaking everything while convincing the rest of us to fight each other over the remaining and ever-shrinking slice of the pie.  This is a classic example of an abusive relationship and this is the main point of this entire website.

Any one of us could have fallen victim to trickledown economics, losing our jobs or even entire industries to offshoring, meeting financial ruin because of a bad medical diagnosis, being squeezed into paying for a misdirected college education, drug/opioid addiction, or simply not being able to live up to the very false ideals that our society interprets as “successful”.  Sadly, for many of us, more than one of the above applies and most Americans are still fair game to any of these calamities.

So who has been doing this?  It is the parasite class and their lackeys – and they have finally openly admitted it (but are still doing it).  They are the ones that are crippling our government and squeezing all they can out of America and Americans while convincing us to tag along with them. 

They are using fear, hate, and division to hide what they are doing to us while getting our approval of their agenda.  They convince us to blame our neighbors while they rob us blind, they tell us to despise our government as they undermine it, they demand that we ignore the science and medicine as they wrongly discredit them.  They have us looking all over the place for ideas and people to blame when it is actually they that have caused most of our problems.  They know that fear is the best way to control the people of a country and they know damn well that we will follow them over a cliff as long as we think they are “protecting” us. With all this in mind, the “threat-haven” environment mentioned earlier should really be described as “take-blame-protect-control-abuse”. 

A good example of how far they will, and can, go is the Tea Party.  There is plenty of evidence showing that the Tea Party was hardly a grassroots movement and that it was kickstarted, funded, and manipulated by conservative political organizations and their wealthy donors. Their handpicked toadies, like representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, and many others purposefully sow division within our government and across our country.  

No matter how important the topic is, it is the identity of the messenger that will determine our opinion. 

Many of us now view things with a strictly political bias, no longer caring about what is right or wrong.  Our priority is to stay in good standing with our team and we gleefully ignore obvious facts to do so.  No matter how important the topic is, only the identity of the messenger will determine our opinion.  This rut in which we find ourselves wastes the energy of America and greatly holds back our progress.  The idea of America is to have as many of us as possible thoughtfully contribute to our Democracy – that is what will drive us forward.  Divisiveness is literally wasting our time – even crippling our ability to solve problems that we must solve for everyone’s benefit, such as the Covid-19 Pandemic, climate change, alternative energies, medical research, etc.  The division is literally killing us.

We have been tricked into blaming our neighbors while the parasite class is taking away our money, our political power, our future, and our lives.

Do you really think there are fewer and fewer small businesses because of the “takers” in our society – or is it because these small businesses are getting squeezed out of existence by giant companies and a declining customer base? 

Do you really think minorities are the reason family farms are shutting down everywhere or is it because of Big Ag sweeping across the country swooping them up or squeezing them out?

Do you really think that scientists are lying to us about climate change?  We follow their advice on weather, hurricane tracks, tornado warnings, etc. so why not on climate change? Do we ignore our RMI results?  Do we not use the science behind flight, the internet, and medicine?  What is it about climate change science that we need to ignore?  Could it be that some of us are being herded by politicians and business groups funded by Big Oil?  You know the answer.

Do you really think we can’t afford health care for everybody?  As a nation, we have never had so much money – it’s just tucked away by the wealthy and never used.  Insurance companies are driven by the need to show ever-expanding profits to keep Wall Street happy – they are not driven to keep you alive.  They can’t be blamed for wanting our government out of health care – they would lose their billions of dollars in profit that they get for doing nothing other than getting in the way of our health.

The list of questions goes on and on, but one look at where all the money has collected in this country will answer them all for you. Or will it? Those of us that have found shelter in the safe haven probably won’t believe anything that comes from outside or casts our team or its leaders in a bad light.