See recent report on climate by atmospheric physicists Richar Lindzen and William Happer below. “The common assumption that carbon dioxide is “the main driver of climate change” is scientifically false…. All Net Zero Actions Worldwide Should Be Stopped Immediately”.
Sitesplainin qualifier: This site repeatedly appeals to the US situation to illustrate common major issues that are afflicting most Western societies.
Projection, demonization of differing others, Wendell Krossa- Just some musing with other curious explorers of these things.
This is some street-level psychology from a fiercely independent commoner, or populist if you will, as in Winston Marshall’s comment that “populism is democracy”. Definitely not dogmatically right or left but more floating butterfly as per Louis Zurcher’s “Mutable Self” trying to exist in open process- open to ongoing learning, development, change, and progress toward a more humane future. Shaped by the basic principles of Classic Liberalism (Daniel Hannan’s “Inventing Freedom” or David Boaz’s “Libertarianism: A Primer”, etc.). Paraphrased as “Live and let live”.
And patience liberals/Democrats… After some early hard knocks for your side, the bothsideism element appears further below.
Intro note:
We dehumanize ourselves when we engage the projection of our faults onto others and then exaggeratingly demonize the differing others as “evil”. All sides of political and social divides exhibit such behavior. This social pathology has become so prominent over recent years- to view the differing other as an enemy and then to frame our disagreements in terms of us positioning ourselves on the purely righteous side and battling intolerable evil on the other side. Such framing deforms the hero’s quest.
People today employ the worst of smears to dehumanize the differing other- “Hitler, racist, Russian asset, fascist, transphobic and bigot, liar….”, and on and on. Many even exaggerate the imperfections and failures of differing others to demonic scale.
Add here the perverse tendency to claim the differing other presents some form of apocalyptic threat (i.e. “the end of democracy… the end of the world”).
Such behavior dehumanizes our opponents and so also dehumanizes us for engaging it.
Affirming my independent commoner status, I will state that “bothsideism” applies to this projection and demonization issue. But I will illustrate with anecdotes/points mainly from the side that has been most dominant over past years- i.e. Woke Progressive liberals/Democrats.
The current dominance of the left has been noted in the public messaging on mainstream media, in education, and in government agencies (i.e. the Twitter Files revelations of how intelligence agencies worked mainly for one side to censor the other side on social media giants such as Twitter, Facebook). Note also how Google AI and search algorithms were exposed for favoring one side- the left. Further, many government institutions/programs have embraced extreme left Woke Progressive, and many public companies have cowed to that in its varied forms- i.e. DEI, ESG.
Another intro note: The “bad” in us is our animal inheritance, notably the “evil triad” impulses to tribalism, domination of others, and punitive retaliation and destruction of differing others. This is not some metaphysically originating “evil” that has long been framed by religions as “sin” or “original sinfulness”, something prompted originally by fallen angels/Satan (according to biblical mythology). We don’t need to look anywhere else aside from where we came from in the primitive past, from that “nasty, brutish, and short” animal existence.
Probing the psychology involved in left-wing hysteria over differing others, dissenting others.
Many of us, along with Michael Shellenberger, Jordan Peterson, Christine Brophy, and others, are trying to understand what happened to our liberal colleagues, friends, and fellow citizens beginning roughly some 8 years ago. Many in this sector of the population have abandoned true liberalism and have become hysterically unhinged over particularly one person- Donald Trump. The seeds of the abandonment of liberalism were sown long before.
Michael (in the article below, as in previous articles) is trying to understand what is behind the hysterically unhinged hatred, vilification, and irrational demonization coming from Democrats/liberals today, who have shifted to embrace a highly “illiberal” form of progressivism. Other self-identifying “old school liberals” also point this out- e.g. Jimmy Dore, Bill Maher, among others stating that woke liberals are no longer liberal but have become “highly illiberal”.
Democrats/liberals, in the process of ratcheting up hysteria over Donald Trump, have abandoned Classic Liberal fundamentals like protection of individual freedom of opinion and speech, even claiming that too much freedom for people is dangerous.
Evidence of this abandonment of Classic Liberalism- Note that some 70% of Democrats now want more censorship. We saw this in the Twitter files revelations where Democrats collaborated with intelligence agencies to censor political opponents. We saw it in the Hunter Biden laptop coverup where the Democratic party was assisted by the intelligence agencies to censor a true story.
We see it in efforts to criminalize opponents through lawfare. The efforts to silence opponents, even imprison them, is based on hysterically exaggerated claims that political opponents are Nazis led by a new Hitler. Democrats reason that you cannot grant such evil people equal freedoms and rights. To protect the republic (and democracy), political opponents have to be silenced, stopped at all costs, and eliminated from voicing their opinions in public spaces like social media.
Parents, for another example, just challenging new trends in their children’s education (i.e. DEI extremism), were framed as “domestic terrorists”, threats to democracy, and on and on. The left sicced the FBI on them (as in “sicced the dogs on them”).
The smears used to discredit, demonize, and dehumanize political opponents as intolerable evil have gone full-frontal extreme. Again, the litany- “racists, fascists, Nazis, threats to democracy, Russian assets, hate speech proponents, purveyors of disinformation/misinformation, liars, deplorables,…”, and more. These smears emanate from a spirit of despising the other, with vilification even cloaked as comedy (i.e. Stephen Colbert’s “Trump is Putin’s cock-holster”). We have all felt and recognized the spirit of intense hatred toward Trump and his supporters that fuels the projection and demonization of today.
What happened to these liberals is the question posed by Shellenberger in the article below. What kind of psychology is now operating in the minds of our fellow liberals?
The creation of Satan as the ultimate embodiment of evil
What liberals are doing to Trump is, in one sense, the expression/exhibition of an intense personal embarrassment, a redirection of personal guilt and shame (self-hatred even). It is the shifting and misdirection of blame to others, the projection of the worst in our selves onto others. And then the demonization of that other to extreme status/scale as far worse in comparison to oneself. And this pulls in the background element of Zoroastrian cosmic battle of good vs evil. Add the refinement of cosmic dualism in the Hero’s quest where people frame themselves as righteous heroes battling against evil enemies (see more below on the oversimplified framing of good versus evil that distorts reality).
Where might this come from?
Projection and the exaggerated demonization of imperfect others began with our primitive ancestors, who took awareness of human badness (i.e. the dark impulses of our animal inheritance) and mis-framed the human sense of imperfection as something more sinister- as “sin, sinfulness”, meaning some profoundly metaphysical-type stain on our humanity. They then went further and personified this sense of human corruption in terms of separate-from-humanity entities that were demonic, ultimately imagined as Satan or the Devil, the ultimate embodiment of what is bad. They gave the dark side of humanity its ugliest, most exaggerated expression in anthropomorphized entities of ultimate evil.
Our ancestors added myths of Satan as responsible for the origin of all evil and especially evil in humanity by tempting people to do bad things (e.g. the temptation of Jesus as one example). The myth of a metaphysical spirit behind human badness completed the human explanation of evil in life. It would take subsequent millennia for us to fully understand that human badness was simply the inherited animal in us, and had nothing to do with metaphysical spirits.
The shifting of blame outward and away from themselves, and then exaggeratingly demonizing others (i.e. creating ultimate enemies to blame), was the outcome of a humane consciousness developing in our ancestors. That early growing awareness of goodness contrasted with a growing sensitivity and shame over human badness demanded explanations. Hence, the response of shift the blame.
I would suggest that in the growing awareness of the “evil” of our inner animal inheritance you see a potential source of motivation that would lead to the early human attempts at redirection and projection outward that stems from a sense of shame and guilt. I suggest this as just another possible element in the mix of understanding and explaining things.
Admission of personal guilt is also a frightening thing
The awareness and admission of personal badness intuitively evokes fear, hence the desire to project our obvious badness outward to somewhere or someone else as responsible. This is as old as humanity- to project human badness outward to others as worse in contrast with oneself, for varied reasons.
The projection of human badness outward, and related demonization of others, possibly stems from early people’s fear due to other deformities in early mythology- i.e. the fear of punishment by angry gods promising judgment, exclusion, and punitive destruction, whether in this life through natural disasters, disease, accident, and cruelty from others, or by ultimate judgment and punishment through apocalypse and hell.
The intuitive deflection of blame to something or someone outside ourselves, to others, may be incited in part by this intensely personal sense of being bad and thereby feeling ourselves to be under threat of divine judgement and punishment.
Add to that, as noted above, that our ancestors also began to blame some greater metaphysical evil aside from themselves as responsible for human badness, whether demons that possessed people and drove them crazy, and ultimately to blame some ultimate source of evil like Satan as responsible for the evil in us. That later became a meme-like joke of the modern era- to claim that “the devil made me do it”, or to blame demonic-like possession- “I don’t know what possessed me”.
Back to the present liberal/Democratic practice of projection/demonization:
Donald Trump did not help counter this current dominant liberal trend to hysterical redirection and projection of personal faults outward to others. To the contrary, he exacerbated and incited this pathology in opponents even further. He seemed to enjoy stirring outrage in opponents. He offered himself as an easy target for the hysterical projection of personal faults onto others and the demonization of others to grotesquely exaggerated scale.
Example: He embraced the ugly feature of retaliation and gloried in it as something justifiable, even good. He even defensively honored it as necessary to political survival. I recall his town hall interview with Bret Baier and Martha McCullum of Fox where some lady, a staunch supporter of his, while stating that she supported his good policies, she nonetheless challenged him over his nasty, bullying tweets.
After listening to her request to stop the social media bullying, Trump laughed and then responded to her defensively, stating that if he did not hit back against his enemies, harshly, then they would laugh him off the stage as weak. He appears to misunderstand that most people intuitively respect conciliatory people like Nelson Mandela as strong examples of courageous or manly humanity. It is not an abandonment of manhood to treat others decently and respectfully and to avoid dehumanizing ad hominem attacks.
Trump’s defense of harsh retaliatory response toward opponents is unfortunately misinformed because retaliation belittles and dehumanizes all of us. Retaliation renders all of us petty, not the great human spirits that we ought to be. It seems at times that he even reveled in harsh retaliation and stirring outrage from his enemies. By engaging such behavior, Trump often just offered up himself as an easy target for demonization by people already possessed by Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Further on this…
Probing these things- i.e. the practice of projecting one’s faults outward onto differing others, and the demonization of those others as worse- is all part of the understanding the “psychology” of what is going on today, just as Shellenberger and others try to understand what has happened to former liberals/Democrats.
Taking the belief and practice of our ancestors to project evil out onto others and then onto supreme embodiments of evil, as in myths of demons and Satan, so Trump was not just demonized as a political opponent but reaching much further, Democrats framed him as the new and latest edition of Satan, the new Hitler, the most evil of evil, the supreme embodiment of evil.
Democrats/liberals took the “dark nature” inside all of us, our commonly shared animal inheritance (i.e. to tribalism, domination, demonization and punitive destruction of differing others) and projected their own embodiment of these things outward and away from themselves. They redirected their personal shame and guilt outward and personified it in people like Donald Trump.
Trump’s apparent glorying in pathologies like retaliation just fueled the liberal frenzy as evidence of his irredeemable evil.
But give the liberals/Dems this–
Granted, there are elements in Trump of cringe-evoking (to some) braggadocio, an exaggeration of accomplishments that embarrasses most of us who prefer more subtle forms of expression that enable us to present ourselves as “cool” while “humble bragging”. We wince at Trump’s unvarnished and blunt patting himself on the back, tooting his own horn far too loudly. But maybe that’s just because, as a successful person, he is more confident than many of us. And, after all, he is a New York real estate salesman. You know- “This ‘one of a kind’ beauty has charm and character, located in a prestigious neighborhood with panoramic views, your dream home where all your wishes are fulfilled”.
He uses superlatives excessively, often stating re some personal accomplishment that it was “the greatest or best ever”. His opponents then feel triggered that he is not “dignified” in the manner of traditional politicians who yack a lot in pablum generalities. Trump, in the estimation of liberals, is too much like a rough spoken commoner or populist, not exhibiting the proper snootiness and ‘cool’ of high-status elites, the Hollywood types.
Nonetheless, he is not the monster that they have created where every utterance of his is ripped from its context, distorted intentionally to make it sound most evil, where such distortions then effectively become more narrative-affirming media “lies”, all to affirm the demonization of the “Orange monster” that his opponents have created.
Take, for example, the recent Trump joke about Hannibal Lector inviting guests to dinner. That was twisted by Morning Joe (Scarborough of MSNBC) into “praise for Lector”. Now, who’s your liar?
So also, with the claim that Trump praised white supremacist Nazis after the Charlottesville incident, stating that “there were very fine people on both sides”, when he actually condemned the neo-Nazis and white nationalists very clearly in the full context of his comments. Joe Biden again, recently on his NBC interview with Lester Holt, repeated this lie. And he persistently (projection/demonization) claims that Trump is a liar. Huh?
This is what changed the mind of Trump uber-hater Michael Rappaport when he was told that the “fine people on both sides” was a lie and his favored liberal media had lied to him. He wondered on the Patrick Bet-David podcast- What else are they lying about? All to keep the monster narrative going at hyper-hysteria level.
Here is some of the larger context of Trump’s statement re Charlottesville…
“Reporter: You said there was hatred and violence on both sides?
“Trump: I do think there is blame — yes, I think there is blame on both sides. You look at, you look at both sides. I think there’s blame on both sides, and I have no doubt about it, and you don’t have any doubt about it either. And, and, and, and if you reported it accurately, you would say.
“Reporter: The neo-Nazis started this thing. They showed up in Charlottesville.
“Trump: Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group — excuse me, excuse me, I saw the same pictures as you did — you had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name. George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status, are we gonna take down — excuse me — are we gonna take down statues of George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him? Okay good. Are we gonna take down the statue? Cause he was a major slaveowner. Now are we gonna take down his statue? So you know what? It’s fine. You’re changing history, you’re changing culture, and you had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits, and with the helmets, and the baseball bats, you got a lot of bad people in the other group too.
“Reporter: I’m sorry sir, I didn’t understand what you were saying, you were saying the press has treated white nationalists unfairly? I don’t understand what you’re saying.
“Trump: No, no. There were people in that rally — and I looked the night before — if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group there was some bad ones. The following day it looked like they had some rough, bad people. Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you wanna call them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest — and very legally protest — because I don’t know if you know, they had a permit. The other group didn’t have a permit. So I only tell you this, there are two sides to a story. I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country. A horrible moment. But there are two sides to the country.”
(End of quote)
The same distortion occurs where people repeatedly frame Trump’s jokes as seriously offensive statements when they are so obviously, in context, just comedy. His opponents often miss his sense of humor (who said leftists, in their hateful outrage, have become humorless) where he is even self-depreciatingly poking fun at himself. Such is the deforming of mind and rationality, and souring of common human decency, that stems from nursing hatred through a perverse narrative that your opponent is an irredeemable monster, Hitler 2.0.
Pulling back to sanity and what is real
We all do well to get a firm grip on reality by again recognizing the real source of evil in life, the real monster, and the real battle of life that takes place inside each of us.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either- but right through every human heart- and through all human hearts.”
How to respond to the projection/demonization pathology, Wendell Krossa
First, a scattering of notes and inserts:
How do we get over the urge to project our own imperfection onto others, to deflect blame from ourselves, and then to demonize others as worse, to create a contrast with our own imperfection and failure, in order to make ourselves feel better. We all use continuums of goodness and badness where we place ourselves somewhere on the good end in contrast with others whom we like to view as worse than ourselves.
A big step to get over this, is to rid ourselves of the mind-deforming and debilitating fear of judgment and punishment that subconsciously drives such pathologies.
A related insert: A long-ago German study (Scientific American?) noted regarding the danger of mistakes/failures in organizations, that the threat of punishment drove mistakes underground. People in varied organizations would hide their mistakes/failures for fear of being punished. And hence, the study concluded that organizations advocating punishment of human error did not learn from the mistakes of their people, and protective responses (i.e. protection against future errors) were then not implemented to improve situations.
My point here- We need to feel safe, in a big background sense, ultimately safe in a meta-narrative sense, if we are to properly deal with issues like our own imperfections and failures, and to take full responsibility and learn from our personal failures.
Again, no one has offered better insight on this issue than Historical Jesus (the title that separates him from the Christian version- “Jesus Christ”- that is entirely opposite in message to the actual historical person). Historical Jesus went to the ultimate taproot of the problem of human fear (i.e. fear of ultimate judgment and punishment). He rejected the entire previous history of human thought and explanation (mythologies, religions) that claimed there were angry and retaliatory gods threatening people with judgment and punishment for personal human imperfection and failure. Historical Jesus gave us the profound new insight that deity was no conditions love, a stunningly non-retaliatory reality (no eye for eye justice). In the “stunning new theology of Jesus,” God forgave all and included all in God’s love- i.e. sun and rain were given to both good and bad. There was no threat theology in ultimate eternal reality. There was only love, unconditional love.
Added note: In response to that breakthrough discovery of Jesus, we then look for other insights to explain the presence and purpose of evil in this life.
We find insights such as the suggestion that this world was created as a temporary arena of dualism between good and evil, with imperfection built in from the very beginning, both in the natural world and in humanity. The dualist arena is then a place where we come to learn good in contrast with evil, take on our varied oppositional roles, act out a life story, gain experiences and insights to benefit others, take full personal responsibility for our own imperfections and failures (i.e. natural consequences and related correctional responses) and thereby, from our human experience in this world, grow and develop as human.
Further…
Some additional ideas to correcting this pathological tendency to intuitively want to shift blame, to defensively deflect the personal badness within us all, to contrast ourselves with others whom we frame as worse in order to feel better about ourselves. How then, in light of this, do we maturely recognize personal imperfection and failure, taking full responsibility as fundamental to our growth and development. Learning from our own failures and not giving up, not drowning in self-pity and dejection/despair, but picking ourselves up again and again after every failure and moving on with confidence that growth into mature humanity is a life-long process of “try and try again”, with often just incremental gains.
Others have offered helpful insights…
Essential to countering the natural tendency to redirect our shame and guilt outward onto others, to project our own self-despising and self-hatred onto imperfect others around us, with the false comparison that they are worse evil (demonization) in order to make ourselves feel better, essential here is to start inside, to start with the animal inheritance that is inside each of us. This is about taking full personal responsibility for that inner monster and then focusing on that as the real source of evil in life, the real enemy that we must fight and conquer. Locate the hero’s quest there inside us. We must win that battle first, instead of hating and blaming others as Hitlers to be despised, demonized, vilified, and destroyed.
Start within and, to lessen our fear to grapple with personal imperfection and failure, recognize that the dark and ugly animal inheritance inside us is not the real us. “We are not our brains” (paraphrase of Jeffrey Schwartz’s book title). Our animal origins and inheritance has cursed all of us with the inhumane impulses to tribalism, domination of others, and to punitive destruction of others. But these base impulses do not define the real core human person that is the authentic us.
Insert: “There are no really bad people, just bad ideas and bad thinking that lead people to do bad things”, Bob Brinsmead.
We all share a fundamental human spirit that is most essentially good at core. That is our essential reality as human persons. Our human self is the fundamental reality that exists aside from our material brain, though it tightly interacts with the material brain (see the books of neuroscientist and Nobel laureate John Eccles). We are not merely “a product of the brain” that developed in animal existence and is shaped by defiling, dehumanizing animal impulses.
Other “spiritual” insights– We are most essentially defined by love, by the presence of the God that is love and has incarnated in each one of us, inseparable from our human spirit.
Note here also the “imposter syndrome” thing- i.e. that our awareness and sensitivity to our imperfection often undermines our feeling good about ourselves and causes us to doubt our essential nature as good persons.
By countering the sense of personal badness with varied insights and arguments we properly prepare ourselves to fight the larger battles of life against the more general versions of anti-humanism that dominate public meta-narratives.
My basic argument here:
Again, I repeat the critical Jesus insight, his “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory deity” as critical to solving these issues of the human fear of punishment for personal imperfection and failures, and the consequent tendency to defensively project blame onto others, to tribally demonize others. Nothing is more critical than the basic themes of our narratives, the ideas that we hold in the background of our minds that shape our thinking, our emotions, our motivations and views of life and others. Add here also, the themes that influence us from the subconscious realm- the archetypal stuff.
We need a complex of ideas that re-orient us constantly to basic realities that are critical to our mental/emotional health, that help us get through life safely, no matter what life throws at us.
Most critical here is how we understand and define “ultimate reality” or deity, the cohering center that shapes all else in human narratives. How do we define the core nature of reality, which then defines the purpose of life?
This is where the insight of Historical Jesus comes into play. He stated that love defined Ultimate Reality or deity. He stated that God was a non-retaliatory God. God was no conditions love. Meaning that no matter how we failed in this life, we were still included in the love of God because authentic love will not forsake anyone.
God as no conditions love means that there is no ultimate judgment, no ultimate exclusion of anyone. The love of God is shown to both good and bad people (“sun and rain given to both righteous and unrighteous”). With a God that is unconditional love there will be no ultimate punishment or destruction as with the perverse myths of apocalypse and hell.
The stunning new theology of Jesus also defines the ideal of what we should be about, what defines our purpose and ought to shape our ethics, our treatment of others. Just as God loves God’s enemies, so we also should love our enemies. We should exhibit the same non-retaliatory love toward all.
That love at the core of our narratives ought to function to reorient us at all times to how we should think, feel, and respond or behave toward others, how we should treat others. “Love your enemies because God does”. We thereby maintain our humanity in this life, and find the safest route through life as in “do the least harm”, by embracing nonretaliatory, no conditions love as our guiding ethic in the face of evil.
So Historical Jesus dealt with the uber fear, the mother of all human fears, the most deeply rooted of all fears- fear of ultimate judgment, fear of divine anger and ultimate exclusion, fear of ultimate retaliation by God in the fear of ultimate punishment and destruction. The Jesus insight is profound liberation from these primal fears.
We have had this insight for two millennia now, an insight to liberate us as nothing ever offered before, the most profound liberation of mind, emotions, and spirit. But Paul then buried that insight in his retreat to the same old threat theology, the old retaliatory theology and ethics that had endlessly incited millennia of the tribalism of true believers vs unbelievers, of righteous heroes battling against evil enemies. By re-igniting the old tribal thinking and emotions, Paul again inflamed the same old projection of evil onto others, the same old demonization of differing others.
Conclusion:
Embrace and emphasize this fundamental insight and truth that we are all safe in the end. Lodge that truth solidly in your background narrative as a fundamental baseline belief that you hang onto no matter what else may fall away. There is no ultimate judgement, no coming punishment or exclusion, no ultimate destruction… of anyone. The sense of ultimate safety rooted in such a baseline truth helps us face our inner monster and enemy and to take full responsibility for having this potential “Hitler”- our animal impulses- inside every one of us.
To illustrate this last point: A guest of Joe Rogan once stated that his ayahuasca experience had revealed to him that he had the potential of Hitler inside him.
With a sense of ultimate safety, securely established as a baseline belief, we can then more properly deal with our inner animal, taking full personal responsibility for it, and also viewing others the same- i.e. not as more evil than ourselves, but struggling with the same inner monster and enemy of the animal inheritance.
Again: We do well to heed Solzhenitsyn’s statement that the real battle of good against evil takes place not between political parties or classes but takes place inside every human heart. That frames properly our primary obligation to fight that real battle and the real monster. To recognize that we have found the real enemy, and it is inside us. It is not differing others.
We then understand that imperfect others, just like ourselves, are not “enemies”. They are most fundamentally members of our family, the one human family. This is the oneness thing again, whether based on “Mitochondrial Eve, NDE oneness insights, or the fundamental oneness of all reality as per ‘quantum entanglement’”. Whatever you appeal to, affirm our fundamental oneness, just as Joseph Campbell affirmed our “brotherhood with even the guiltiest” as we engage the righteous battles against evil in life.
“For love is exactly as strong as life. And when life produces what the intellect names evil, we may enter into righteous battle, contending ‘from loyalty of heart’: however, if the principle of love (Christ’s “Love your enemies”) is lost thereby, our humanity too will be lost. ‘Man’, in the words of the American novelist Hawthorne, ‘must not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest’” (Myths To Live By).
Add here also the awareness of the distortion of the hero’s quest when we frame ourselves as the good ones in a righteous battle against our opponents as the evil enemies/monsters to be conquered and destroyed. That framing embraces the Zoroastrian cosmic dualism of a good God, with his true believers in the good religion, battling a great evil Force or Spirit with his followers in the false religion who must be defeated, conquered, in order to “save the world”.
Further, in response to the out-of-control projection and demonization of one another today, we also do well to re-enforce the fundamental principles and institutions of Classic Liberalism that protect us from the worst impulses in ourselves- impulses to tribal exclusion of differing others, domination and subjection of differing others to our thinking and policies (meddling, intervening, controlling, undermining the freedom and rights of others to self-determination), and employing punitive justice to dehumanize and destroy differing others.
Additional note:
Speculation on the nature of ultimate reality, as was done by Historical Jesus, is critical to defining and understanding the purpose of reality and life, especially the purpose of human life. That statement- “be unconditionally merciful just as your Father is unconditionally merciful”. The nature of Ultimate Reality or deity defines how we should behave. It informs the impulse to “Be like Daddy”. The long-term understanding of people that human behavior should be based on and validated by similar theology.
And now one of the craziest of all smears/conspiracy theories about the other side. Post-assassination attempt on Trump, some 30% of Democrats believe that Trump staged the assassination attempt. He did this, they suggest, to help himself get elected. Kill people for self-gain? Yes, the Democrats say, he is capable of anything.
This illustrates the insanity that irrational, unleashed hatred of others evokes in minds.
An example of Trump’s self-deprecatory humor (this about his hair):
“I have to just interject, if you would turn off those cameras… see the screen up there of me? That’s very severe, that comb over that’s a severe sucker,” Trump quipped while looking at a screen showing his remarks. “It looks OK from the other side, but that is very severe. I apologize. Man, I looked up there, I said, ‘Whoa, look at that.’ Wow. That’s like a work of art.”
And his response to Elon Musk donating $45 million a month to his campaign and not even telling him about it…
Trump’s response: “I read he gives me $45million a month. I talked to him a while ago, and he didn’t even mention it. Other guys give you two dollars and you got to take them to lunch. Two dollars and you got to wine em and dine em.”
This from independent news media, Bari Weiss’s Free Press- Comedian and social/political commentator Tim Dillon on Trump’s humor (and the upcoming US election)…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=362umLgTUmw&t=294s
He comments on the stated threat that “Trump will become a dictator and end democracy”, saying that Democrats at every opportunity have acted dictatorially. He details the litany of Democratic dictatorial actions/events over past years.
Again- Projection of your own main faults onto others, and demonization of your opponents as worse than you.
And then this…
This is what a growing number of Democrats have been admitting in recent years- that Trump’s policies were good for the country. It started with Van Jones of CNN back in 2020 stopping a Jake Tapper rant on Trump and saying “Jake, liberals get mad at me but we don’t give Trump enough praise for his good policies that really helped minority communities”. He then listed the good policies of Trump- i.e. the low unemployment and booming economy, opportunity zones in black communities, justice reform (Biden was the creator of the 1994 tough on crime bill that began locking up many young black men and Biden has still not repudiated that even though both Clinton’s apologized for that bill). Trump was the only one to get Democrats and Republicans to agree on reforming criminal justice.
Good for Van Jones for showing some integrity and honestly admitting those things, just as other leading Democrats now acknowledge that Trump’s border policies were right, among other policies like no wars. Even Biden has reversed some of his executive orders to re-instate the Trump border policies. And so on…
“Progressives enraged as Democrats reportedly privately admit Trump isn’t an ‘existential threat to democracy’: ‘Absolutely fucking enraging,’ former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau reacted”, Joseph Wulfsohn,
“Liberals on social media seethed in reaction to Democratic lawmakers reportedly admitting behind the scenes that former President Trump isn’t a “threat to democracy” as their party loudly claims.
“New York Times columnist Ezra Klein appeared on The Bulwark Podcast Tuesday and revealed what “top Democrats” have told him off the record as they panic over whether they should support or abandon President Biden on their ticket….
“People are… weighing what will happen if Donald Trump wins, and saying, in a revealed preference way, ‘I can live with Donald Trump winning,’” Klein said. “And I’ve heard people say that to me off the record, to be fair-“…
“”I’ve had top Democrats say to me, basically, say something like, ‘I don’t know why all these Democrats who think Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy are acting the way they are. But the reason I’m acting the way I am is because I don’t think that,'” Klein continued….
“”I find it maddening, but I do find it consistent,” Klein responded….
“Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, offered a similar sentiment publicly in an op-ed published in the Bangor Daily News with the headline “Donald Trump is going to win the election and democracy will be just fine.””
From the best minds on climate at “co2coalition.org”
“Net Zero Policies Will Have a Trivial Effect on Temperature, But Disastrous Effects on People Worldwide”, Richard Lindzen, William Happer, July 14, 2024
See full report at:
Quotes:
“The United States and countries worldwide are vigorously pursuing regulations and subsidies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to Net Zero by 2050 on the assumption, as stated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that the “evidence is clear that carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main driver of climate change” and is “responsible for more than 50% of the change,” note Drs. Richard Lindzen and William Happer.
“However, this demonization of CO2 contradicted in a paper by the two physicists. Below is a summary of this important report:
“At today’s CO2 concentration in the atmosphere of approximately 420 parts per million, additional amounts of CO2 have little ability to absorb heat and therefore is now a weak greenhouse gas. At higher concentrations in the future, the ability of increases to warm the planet will be even smaller. This also means that the common assumption that carbon dioxide is “the main driver of climate change” is scientifically false.
“Implications:
1. Net Zero efforts will have a trivial effect on temperature.
2. Net Zero policies will be disastrous for people worldwide.
3. More carbon dioxide means more food.
4. Fossil fuels must not be eliminated.
“All Net Zero Actions Worldwide Should Be Stopped Immediately:
“More carbon dioxide cannot cause catastrophic global warming or more extreme weather….
“Referring to additional atmospheric CO2 as “carbon pollution” is complete nonsense. More CO2 does no harm. Quite the contrary, it does two good things for humanity: (1) It provides a beneficial increase in temperature, although slight and much less than natural fluctuations. (2) It creates more food for people worldwide, which we cover further below.
“More Carbon Dioxide Means More Food. Contrary to the demonization of the carbon dioxide as a pollutant, increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide boosts the amount of food available to people worldwide, including in drought-stricken areas. Doubling carbon dioxide to 800 ppm, for example. will increase global food supplies by many tens of percent.
“Thus, carbon dioxide emissions should not be reduced, but increased to provide more food worldwide. There would be no risk of catastrophic global warming or extreme weather because carbon dioxide is now a weak greenhouse gas. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions will reduce the amount of food available to people worldwide and produce no benefit to the climate.”