Real Americans Wanted

Thanks Michelle Bachmann. Thank you for being the poster child of uncivil discourse. Thank you for leading the masses into a vitriolic hate-laced frenzy that will inevitably lead to more people getting hurt. Now I freely admit Representative Bachmann is not the only one using this approach to effect policy, but she always seems to be smack in the middle of it.

Socialist, Fascist, Death panels, elitist, DemocRAT, the list goes on....but now we have "real Freedom loving Americans." This is to compare with those Americans that are less real and hate freedom.

Let's back up a minute and think about human nature. What is it that allows people who love their parents, their children, their neighbors to do horrible despicable things to other people? How does someone torture, murder, maim one person but go home to hug their spouse and tuck in their children only to spend the night worrying over a sick pet? You know what, let's be completely honest for a minute. Instead of torture, murder, and maim, let's you actual events that happen. People mutilate each other, sever hands, breasts, tongues, gouge out eyes. Rape, gang rape, sodomize others. Will kill one member of a family in front of another, will burn human beings alive.

I guess we can assume that people who commit such acts are really inhuman. But frankly I think you're kidding yourself and are abjectly horrified to look in the mirror. African fighters that mutilate children and innocent men and women are different, they aren't like us. We say that as we embrace Jack Bauer obtaining that vital information in any way possible. We say that as we allow Dick Cheney to walk free and happily laud his role in legalizing torture. You know because when we do it, its different.

Regardless of your politics, I think there is one important psychological trait that allows church going family members to be evil (and that's really what we're talking about). That trait is making the human being you are torturing, about to murder, raped no longer a human being in your mind. Once you have separated a person from the circle of humanity, it becomes possible to justify anything as morally legit.

Every year at this time I set a bunch of traps to eliminate the field mice that move in when the weather changes. Im not a fan of killing cute mammals, I rescue moles from the window wells in the summer and release them in the woods. But I separate these field mice from the circle of cute mammals but throwing in a destructive pest criteria. This allows me to easily set the traps and dispose of them. It allows me to euthanize those mice that were caught but not killed without regret (except that they werent immediately killed and suffered in the short term). It allows me to set glue traps, when the spring traps continually fail. I think it less quick and more stressful on the mice, but they need to go and I can't keep fattening them up on peanut butter. That's how I sleep at night killing field mice. You might be thinking, "come on, its just a freaking mouse, grow a pair!" I agree, its just a mouse. Now how do you think our neighbors that dragged a black man to his death, beat the homosexual to death, murdered women and children in Vietnam sleep at night? I think, except in cases of sociopathy, its much the same way. All you need to do is separate the person that you are torturing from the circle of humanity. Once they become the "other" anything goes.

And you know what? The faces of the republican party are excellent at establishing the "other." Michelle Bachmann knows a rat when she sees one. Ann Coulter logically deals with contra-arguments. But you know what, these people the Limbaughs Hannitys and Becks of the world tell us about, they aren't real, they definitely don't love freedom, and they are most certainly the "other." And since they are the "other" you may freely hate them. Despise them. Loathe them. And when one of you decides to torture murder maim and/or rape one of them, remember its ok. Because the "other" really isn't one of us anyway. But don't take my word for it. Im not even real.