The Toxic Stench of Hateful Lies
Another in the series of pieces I venture in my effort to find the most constructive ways to engage and challenge the conservative audience for my radio shows in Virginia.
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It’s said that trauma reverberates through the generations, that people are affected by the impact on their ancestors of the disasters and nightmares they lived through. That can be true of the private traumas of families– terrible deaths, ruinous disasters– or of the collective traumas of whole peoples.
For example, it appears to be the case that the traumatic “Burning” that the Shenandoah Valley suffered in the last years of the Civil War leaves an imprint on the culture here that’s detectable still.
Traumas can disable people, or they can sensitize people. I’m the heir of an ancestral trauma that, I believe, has made me more able than most to recognize the toxic smell of hatred as it seeps into a land, more aware of the ugly and destructive possibilities the spirit of hatred can portend.
I grew up in the Midwest, an American boy who spent his hours trying to hone his skills in football, basketball and baseball; watching John Wayne movies and singing “The Ballad of Davy Crockett.” Proud to be part of the country that had just rescued the world from fascism, of the country where, at the entrance to the harbor of the nation’s pre-eminent city there stands a Statue of Liberty in whose base are inscribed the famous words inviting to come the world’s “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
In my case, it’s only two generations back that my ancestors –all four of my grandparents– were among those coming to America with that yearning to breathe free. It’s only two generations back, little more than a century ago, that my mother’s mother and her family experienced the trauma that drove them here to escape the terror of a land in which the spirit of hatred had been let loose by the use of hateful lies.
It’s a story I heard, many times, in my childhood. It was my mother who told me, just as it had been her own mother –the one who’d actually experienced it– who’d told her. That’s one way that traumatic experience can be transmitted, though I understand that the imprint of such nightmares can be passed along even if not a word about it is spoken.
My grandmother was a little girl, five or six years old, hiding with her family and several other families in the attic of the main building of their little village in Czarist Russia. Their village was under attack, and they all had to be perfectly silent so no one would know they were there. When the dawn came, my grandmother looked down through a knothole in the floorboards and was startled to see an open eye staring up at her. And then she saw: it was the eye of a corpse, a dead man, lying on top of a stack of bodies their murderers had placed there during the night.
That’s the story, short and simple. But the meaning of it opens up a bigger picture. In Czarist Russia, the ruling powers felt threatened by the discontent of the population they’d oppressed and exploited for generations. To safeguard their power, a century or so ago, these powers worked to redirect the people’s fear and rage: “It’s not we, your oppressors, who are your enemy,” was the essence of the message of these ruling forces, “it’s these other people who are different from you.”
It’s an ancient trick, used by evil rulers from time imemmorial: divide people, and channel the angry and fearful energies of your followers against some “other,” something not like “Us.”
In Czarist Russia, this ugly ploy resulted in a wave of pogroms against the Jews– violent attacks like the one my grandmother lived through. And at the heart of the strategy –by which these peasants were led to hate the scapegoat and ally themselves with their oppressors– was the use of the hateful lie.
In the Russia of the Czars, for example, the peasants’ minds were poisoned with lies about the Jews’ murdering Christian children and using their blood in ritual. Absolutely nothing to it. But people who believe such lies can themselves do unspeakable things.
In that same Russia of a century ago there was first circulated also the most famous perhaps of all lies, a complete forgery called THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION, a fabrication to make people fear the supposed power of a defenseless people.
Such hateful lies produced the atrocities that traumatized my grandmother and, incidentally, affronted the entire civilized world of the early twentieth century.
It also led to a huge exodus of people from Russia –two million people– including my four grandparents.
And thanks to their reaching these shores, I have been privileged to grow up playing sandlot ball and being one of the guys in this great melting pot of American society.
But my ancestral experience has sensitized me to the stench given off by the hateful spirit. And I’m alarmed these days at how this stench is rising in our country.
The news has been full of hateful lies of this kind.
** Obama is a Muslim, the word went out last fall, trying to exploit the way our recent national experience has associated “Muslim” with “threat.”A lie to help stoke people’s fears, knowing that fear is the best way to divide people, and dividing is the best way to conquer.
**Obama’s going to take away our guns– a story, with no evidence to support it, to scare people about something is central for many people to their feelings of security. Fear this man, the subtext goes: he’s not your president, he’s a threat.
** Obama wasn’t born in America, he’s an alien, and he can’t be our president. So claims –against all evidence– the “birther movement,” sowing fear and resentment as if this man who looks different from previous presidents is a usurper, not legitimately deserving of the office he won.These forces will SAY ANYTHING, encourage any falsehood, however absurd, to prevent the bridge-builder who beat them at the polls from bringing different groups of Americans together.
** Obama’s health care plan contains provisions to kill off our elderly –again, a complete fabrication, with no basis whatsoever in reality– sowing fear that behind his agenda lies murderous intent.
Another lie, and again, the lie is to foment fear. It’s all about making people afraid so that they will oppose even changes that would make their own lives more secure by ending the fleecing of Americans by the present system.
Never in my lifetime have I seen such utter dishonesty operating so pervasively at the center of our political life. So many lies, and all of them it seems are fashioned to foster fear and hatred.It alarms me.
Never in my lifetime have I seen lies capturing the minds of such a substantial part of our populace. The lies about the guns led to a four- or five-fold increase in the sales of guns and ammunition. And less than half of all Republicans, nationwide, tell pollsters that they believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States. Among the whites in the South, the percentage who doubt that Obama was born in the U.S., and therefore can legally serve as president, is more than 70 percent.
Where will the sowing of such fears and suspicions take this country?
No, I don’t imagine we have pogroms in our future. For one thing, the present crop of lies is aimed not at defenseless minorities but at someone, who’s from a previously oppressed group, who now holds power.
But one never knows just how the spirit of hateful lies will leave its imprint as history unfolds. (That Russian forgery, THE PROTOCOLS, I mentioned above did some damage back in the time of the pogroms. But who could have imagined how much those lies would later be a powerful tool for the Nazis in their campaign, nearly forty years later, to exterminate millions.)
Whatever its target today, the pattern of hatred –of Us vs. Them thinking– and the pattern of lies and manipulation can only be dangerous for us as a society to give a home to. The pattern of lying about the Other, and trying to destroy the Other, persists even as the targets may change.
Human history should teach us this: the spirit of hateful lies is our enemy, a curse for ALL of us, not just for their immediate targets. And we should fight against that spirit always, whenever we see it at work.
Look for the tell-tale signs. Does it foster fear and hate? Does it divide people? Does it speak to people’s worst sides? Does it require that people have to stay away from objective, responsible sources of information for them to believe it?
Don’t spread hateful lies. Don’t believe them. Don’t put your trust in the people who are willing to use them to advance their power.
This is not what we as a nation want to be.
August 2nd, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Republicans cannot run on their record of the past eight years in government so they can only hope to tar the ‘other’ party.
You don’t hear George Bush’s name . . and for good reason.
On the other hand the Obama administration is set, so I hear, to have a first year budget deficit (in the trillions) four times the highest deficit in the Bush years.
And could make all and every provision of the so-called health reform
proposal open to the public in advance. Put it on line. If it is too much for that, maybe that’s part of the problem. Simplify to the fundamentals.
Ah, but that’s another thing liberals seemingly cannot do. No ?
And Obama’s war in Afghanistan. Someone has posted that he has no control over that. What ?!
Senator Obama was opposed to the invasion of Iraq but was always FOR war in Afghanistan. Am I mistaken about that ? I don’t think so.
SO LET US HEAR ; WHY ARE ‘WE’ THERE ?
Something’s not right about this administration either and with all this so-called stimulus, if you can actually see a trend upward for the American economy and financial structure you have some remarkable lenses.
And the Beers in the White House Ho ! ho ! I couldn’t believe it.
So ! They can’t tout their own past administration, those Republicans,
but they really don’t need to lie if they want to shake confidence in Obama & Co.
But then where does all that leave us . . we the people ?
Ho ! ho ! it really ain’t funny.
August 3rd, 2009 at 9:41 am
I saw pictures of the march in San Francisco after the California proposition overturned the right of gays to marry and have the same status as heterosexual married couples. One picture was a sign that read, “Love is never wrong.” Now there are many kinds of love – Greek words for love include Eros, Philios, Agape. But I agree Love (regarding the other as important and caring about the being of that other) is never wrong.
And so I take as the contrary, “Hate is never right.” If I hate anyone for whatever reason, then I need to examine this feeling and see where it stems. If it is from actions of people or of the people themselves, I need to relent. The feeling itself is hard to deny, but HOW I respond to the feeling is the key.
It really reminds me of Yoda – Fear leads to Anger – Anger leads to Hate. Hate can lead to Murder. “The Dark Side”
Then back to Love again – “Perfect Love casts out Fear.”
And as the sign said, “Love is never wrong.”
Pardon my musings….
I find it good for my own daily “battles” to find a good footing to stand on. Sometimes a mantra-like saying…
Because the question then comes – how do I love someone who hates me? Or must I respond in kind?
August 3rd, 2009 at 9:52 am
The Spirit of Hateful Lies _is_ openly unashamedly present. Hopefully, those “grok” all this, can see through the fog. Neuro/Molecular Scientists have understood for the first time that severe stress of any kind in one generation can affect the epigenomic soup that swims in all our cells. Genes are only a “structure,” epigenomic chemicals directly affect which are turned “ON” or “OFF.” Rheumetoid Arthritis is _one_ blood factor missing called T5. Starvation has the deepest effect over many generations.
ASB nailed it, above. No need for more explication. The whole history of our species has experienced stresses we know all too little about. Is it too far a stretch to imagine that the vitriolic lies spread by these MSM who are to another alarming degree, _owned_ by the same corporations that RATION healthcare to our layed-off generations?
Not a “Nutbag Conspiracy Theory.” Simple genentic function. Origin of speech in our kind (Chomsky’s “Language Structures” have a chemical base in our cells). Those who told scary stories in the dark (COMMON for ages) around campfires may well be the stimulus that caused the Neocortex to grow up and over into our foreheads, with mothers making soothing ‘singing’ sounds to the little’n's later as the moon rose. Population also grew most in the Summer months, for obvious reasons.
Now, a black as prez…, trade deficit soaring…, massive layoffs w/ Ford factory moving to Africa. Wage costs fall 1800%. A BIG flow of ‘aliens’ to cut our lawns and trim our trees to send $ back to Cental America in deep recession. Couldn’t be long before the scary story tellers become very rich
at the expense of stressed out people. Truly scary is the Corporate closeness of the Mercenary Military, the Health Care System, and the vast reach of the MSM into the lives of the truly needy. Perhaps, those who parrot this had great, great, great, great,( 16-20X) – grandparents alive in that great change in Neocortical development. The really compelling thing is their very cells (via the mitochondria) are swimming is stress chemistry 25X generations old, exacerbated by coffee intake. The rugged never wrong frontiersmen – and the individuated cities with growing gay populations.
Our mitochondrial chemistry may drive many of us, to many who spread Hateful Lies Their lawyers call them, “Entertainers.” “The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars; but, in ourselves.” Yes. Hold on to one another as the madness takes hold across the land. No more knotholes in particle-board. Many generations of more Modern History did _not_ believe it would happen to their nation, until it did. 387BCE. Sparta could not imagine they’d be beaten by lowly Thebes (a democracy).
August 3rd, 2009 at 9:58 am
Only a few months ago contributors discussed whether the title or other aspects of the NSB website needed to be changed now that Obama had been elected and we seemed to be exiting an unprecedented national nightmare. It’s always worth waiting for the dust to settle first.
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:03 am
David R writes:
Here’s an analysis, trustworthy I think, presented here some weeks ago at http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=3052. The piece, by David Leonhardt in the New York Times, includes this passage:
So you “hear,” David R., that Obama is about “to have a first year budget deficit (in the trillions) four times the highest deficit in the Bush years.” Well, I wonder if this should call into question just who you’re listening to these days.
It brings to mind the closing thought in the piece, above:
These lies may not be about hate, but they’re probably well understood to be part of the same picture.
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:06 am
Excellent point.
As I’ve said before, I really thought that the dark spirit was largely contained within the Bushite regime, and that the departure of that gang would allow the Republican Party to return to a better spirit of its nature.
Now it appears that the regime was much more an important temporary vehicle for that spirit to wreak its destruction. WIth the regime gone, the American right remains fully possessed by the same dark spirit.
Disappointing. But it just means that the battle must continue to be waged.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:25 am
Andrew Bard Schmookler. Your leading post provides great insight. And there is no “but.”
Therese said:
Therese, you may or may not have meant that anger leads inevitably to hate. With love and respect I want to suggest that anger does not lead inevitably to hate. In my experience starting when I was very young there has frequently been anger with no hatred. Anger can be and often is part of an expression of love. I admit it’s not always easy to tell the difference right away, whether it’s love or hate, especially between/among people who do not know each other well.
Otherwise I support your words to the fullest.
At risk of seeming frivolous despite that I am more than somewhat serious, Dr. Albert Ellis’s rational emotive behavior therapy has helped many in figuring out that sort of thing. It’s a matter of figuring out and rethinking the intermediate step between a given sort of external trigger and whatever undesirable response one might have developed previously. There are no guarantees, of course. For me just reading a few of his books has been valuable.
http://www.amazon.com/Albert-Ellis-Reader-Well-Being-Rational/dp/0806520329
Larry
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:41 pm
The greatest enemy of mankind is FASCISM. It is a part of our history, it is being supported now, and will likely be part of our future in some form or another.
I suggest if we don’t wish to be hiding in the attics, we not forget this, and that we hold up to ridicule and moral criticism every instance of that sick philosophy when it arises.
By the way, if you have not seen the extraordinary movie, “Defiance,” I recommend that you do. I have shown it to college students in Northern Idaho, and it was an eye opener. A fellow philosopher and his wife, show the movie “Shindler’s List.” This in a former hotbed of hate and intolerance.
Unfortunately the current Democratic Leadership is slow to show a better way, is actively abetting the Wall Street operators to continue to steal millions, and has done nothing to hold the recently out-of-power fascists
to be called to account. (See Paul Krugman’s article at the NYTimes today on rewarding bad actors.) My earlier complaints of this nature were censored from this blog by the editor–but it seems that this President, as good a man as he is, is still beholden to economic elitists and those who serve them first.
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:46 pm
When you say former, Richard, are you indicating that the showing of these films (and perhaps other such things) have changed the situation there with respect to hate and intolerance?
August 3rd, 2009 at 2:44 pm
As far as the deficit amount . . when I say so I hear. . I didn’t reference anyone.
Anyone with inside info can post what is the current government source says. (Possibly it would be semi-truthful ?
Todays Newspaper, August 3 headline DEFICIT COULD FORCE TAX HIKE.
Can you believe it ?! I was beginning to think the Obama administration must have found a fountain of free money !
Pennies from ‘heaven” ? or just exactly where ?~
“Officials: Funds needed for health-care reform. Yeah ? I thought it was to reduce the cost of health care and still cover all.
Need money just for health-care? No need to cover the other trillions ? ”
O’ that was the free money ? ?
Please pass the magic lenses around . Looks like a deeper hole ahead.
August 3rd, 2009 at 2:51 pm
We’re nowhere near having any tax hikes. We’re still in the deepest recession since the 30s.
When the economy gets on a good footing, I certainly hope that taxes will be increased, at least back to where they were in the Clinton years, when the economy did great and we actually started REDUCING THE NATIONAL DEBT.
I am a fiscal conservative. And a Keynesian. I believe in running up deficits in bad times like these, and running surpluses in boom times. The net effect should be to keep the national debt as a modest, and not growing, proportion of the GDP.
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:18 pm
BTW . . IT’S NO PLEASURE TO ME any incompetence, or failures or aiding and abeting those who are doing whatever neagtive for my country.
No pleasure to hear it and none for it to be so.
Today’s Republicans are no alternative.
So where does that leave us . we the people.
This mess may be something for the ‘progressives’ to cheer. If so that just confirms further the impression they have made. I would hope it wasn’t so.
Eventually the damaging of the American economy will touch the majority of the people sooner or later and it seems to be coming sooner.
True, slamming the President cannot change anything
BUT A QUESTION: Where are the solutions ?
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:20 pm
That’s what movers and shakers want. Remember “Blade Runner” early Harrison Ford, based on Philip K. Dick’s, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Ruter Hauer deserved an Oscar as did the whole film and all the actors. Should be shown to all students, as well. Our future looks all too similar. Technocrats in Charge pure Raw Capitalism (from John Kenneth Galbraith). Already happening. Look at Bernake’s toatally _secret_ Fed Board Meetings which only publish their deliberations after 3 weeks. Determines the fiscal fate of all of us. They are in constant contact with the TOO BIG TO FAIL banks and insurance co’s, so they get first crack at intererest rate hikes, if they happen. The rest watch MSM and pray for hypnosis and something gratifyingly hateful. “A deeper hole, indeed.”
Barak’s a good man, but they are too big and powerful.
{Dr. say I get to have Rheumatoid Arthrits – why its so hard to type, walk, tolerate heat.)
Go easy comrades.
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:53 pm
ANNOUCEMENT:
My radio show in Virginia is tomorrow morning. And the above piece ‘The Toxic Stench of Hateful Lies” will be how I launch the show.
I expect it will be intense.
(And I hope that we aren’t compelled to spend all our time discussing whether Obama really was not born in the U.S. and whether the health reform proposals intend to “kill Granny.”)
August 3rd, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Best of luck, Andy. I was almosty able to just hear your last radio show about “judicial activism.” Excellent.
August 3rd, 2009 at 5:00 pm
The showing of movies, like the assignment of articles and the discussion of personal experience can lead to enlightenment. Throwing people together as in Basic Training can raise awareness of our humanity. In my first year of teaching at North Idaho College I was attacked by Christian Fundamentalists and neo-nazis. (The latter were living in Richard Butler’s Aryan Nation Compound–no longer extant.) I suspect I show movies for roughly the same reason you give radio talks, and run this blog–to tell a truth, one which is spiritual and Godly and what we should be focusing on instead of the racism, xenophobia and hate.
August 3rd, 2009 at 8:45 pm
In this post-9/11 period we are living the effects of the biggest of lies–9/11.
Who are the liars? http://whodidit.org/cocon.html is one starting point.
Oh, how the liars wish they had not been caught–and how the spin about lying is now being wrought to patch what remains of the beguiling ruse.
It is hard work to continue to weave lies and continue the deceptions that seek to mask the real evildoers of the earth. As truth unravels the lies, the typical protections are invoked as a smokescreen–out from which more deceptions are wrought.
I’m fascinated by the hypothesis of a “bad or evil or liar gene” in mitochondral DNA.
“Our mitochondrial chemistry may drive many of us, to many who spread Hateful Lies Their lawyers call them, “Entertainers.” ”
What are the protocols of the entertainers? They can be inferred by the tactics and the results.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:00 am
As I have always tried to be, I try to look at the facts and not entertain lies and deception. Lies need to be exposed in exquisite detail and very publicly. The MSM has not been overly good at this although there have been attempts to set the record straight mostly on MSNBC and also a bit on CNN although there is a mixed message on that channel. I am not aware of a strong explicit exposure on any of the old news channels such as NBC, ABC or CBS and I would be surprised if there were much of anything, that could be deemed an exposure of right wing lies by Fox. By the way, I rarely watch TV, but sometimes I do watch videos from the MSM on the internet.
David R. I have a plot in my office showing the deficit and surpluses as a percentage of GDP. It’s enlightening and shows that since Reagan Republicans generally trend towards deficits and Democrats trend towards surpluses. Typically though, if the deficit trend was going strong during the prior Republican administration, it takes a few years for a Democratic administration to start the trend back towards surpluses.
I have also created a chart showing number of people living within 125% of poverty or so. There is not as strong a correlation although it does show the success of the Lyndon Johnson’s Poverty reduction programs generally called Welfare.
August 4th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
At this time I believe that we are living with two great, big, super-consequential whoppers:
1) The government’s narrative – and coverup – re- 9/11.
and
2) The government’s narrative – including denial and coverup – of their active involvment with extra-terrestrial neighbors.
Both of these involve “darker forces.”
To the degree that we do not deepen our understanding re- these issues – and this means actively researching them – we suffer from a greatly impoverished worldview and an enfeebled ability to act as positive agents of transformation for our world.
P.S. The scope of these “lies” is so vast that I believe we will – once they are brought to light – need some form of Truth and Reconciliation Commission to handle the fallout.
August 4th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Not only can victims of of trauma can pass on analogues of their trauma to subsequent generations; it is very common for such people to twist their mind in response to the shattering effect of trauma, such that they continue victimizing themselves.
This process can occur through “re-enactment” – where the mind attempts to “heal” terribly traumatic events by re-enacting them in daily life – as if to say, “THIS TIME I’ll get it right.” (It never works).
It is also common for us to respond to feelings of intense powerlessness associated with the trauma by “identifying with the aggressor,” whereby we – again in a twisted way – externalize our own trauma (as if getting the pain out of ourselves) by perpetrating new traumas – either on others or ourselves.
My family background has differences and important similarities to Andy’s narrative about his geneological line. And I can certainly see how the dynamics mentioned above unfolded in my family of origin – with predictably painful results.
August 4th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Robin, I think what is and should be the greatest concern about the current increase in deficit spending is where it is going.
If the money was going where the jobs are beng lost and all the destructive consequences of that we might project a significant economic recovery down where the rubber meets the road. But Robin, not only is that apparently NOT so but it is an accepted reality for government spokespeople. This is weird and I think an engineered economic disruptioin just as I have said all along.
It will probably not ‘stabilize’ until the intended distressed assets have been bought up by the schemers . .(maybe a lot with the ‘stolen’ money)
and impoverished Americans are willing (or forced ) to accept their new future.
The Spirit of God in leaders or pervading a society drives toward human liberty.
Wickedness, the seeing good as evil and evil as good is a device of The Enemy who drives men in power to desire the subjugation of their fellow men.
Many, seeing the trend, have sounded the alarm for decades but the boob tube addicts et al have been so consumed with their navel (and other parts)
or whatever self gratifications and amusements and something-for-nothing false prosperity that they would not or could not hear.
So ! Here it is !
Whichever way you look at the moment(in the natural) there is no way.
As the homeless guy said: Wherever you go . . there you are.