Happy to Hate (Update 2 w/Correction and 2nd new video)

It appears there is no slur too foul, no mud too steeped in libel, for a desperate Republican to fling in order to stir "good Christian folks" to mindless anger. This ad from a sitting U.S. senator should be enough to bar her forever from office -- not to mention decent company.



And though the smear would be miles beyond the pale were Dole's opponent even an "godless atheist" Hagan is an elder in her church and a Presbyterian.

(An Anonymous reader has rightly criticized my excerpt dealing with the Soka Gakkai which is now amended. The Soka Gakkai was NOT excommunicated explicitly because of the fight over corruption but because the Buddhist clergy were opposed to a bill that the Komeito, a small political party the Gakkai supported, wanted to allow Japanese troops to take part in U.N. peacekeeping forces. I thank the reader for having me clarify the facts.)

According to a new survey by the Pew Research Center even though the world is facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression most Republicans claim that they are happy, and 37% even describe themselves as "very happy".

The study suggests that despite the fact that their party had become an object of scorn, their policies, soundly rejected, Republicans remain happier than Democrats and would "probably always will be". The researchers opine that this has something to do with the conservative Republican "worldview". But if the American "Right" is so much "happier" than the "Left" how does Pew account for the kind of ugliness we've seen at their rallies:



The Pew researchers might have been better served heeding Aldous Huxley.

"There are many people for whom hate and rage pay a larger dividend of immediate satisfaction than love. Congenitally aggressive, they soon become adrenalin addicts, deliberately indulging their ugliest passions for the sake of the 'kick' they derive from their psychically stimulated endocrines. Knowing that one self-assertion always ends by evoking other and hostile self-assertions, they sedulously cultivate their truculence.

And, sure enough, very soon they find themselves in the thick of a fight. But a fight is what they most enjoy; for it is while they are fighting that their blood chemistry makes them feel most intensely themselves. 'Feeling good,' they naturally assume that they are good. Adrenalin addiction is rationalized as Righteous Indignation and finally, like the prophet Jonah, they are convinced, unshakably, that they do well to be angry. "
-- Aldous Huxley, "The Devils of Loudun"

It is that conflict-addicted temperament, so valuable for breeding warriors and FOX News commentators, that has been bred in great abundance in the nooks and hollows of our American Red-lands. For these Limbaugh devotees the world is a dangerous, treacherous place that must be mastered by a Great White Father. And contrary to Nietzsche, who believed that Christianity creates humble slaves, Republicans willing to vouch for the premise of headship, see their husbands and fathers as representative manifestations of Jesus. No doubt when the Rev. Arnold Conrad, was delivering his invocation at a rally in Iowa he felt justified chastening God.

"I would also pray Lord that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their God -- whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah -- that his [McCain’s] opponent wins for a variety of reasons. And Lord I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens."

I understand the frustrated reverend's confusion. For a red-blooded male trained from a pup to idolize John Wayne's big dog swagger, the fact that America has become the greatest military power in the history of mankind not only proves that he was chosen to rule, it works on his warrior brain as an opiate and a much-needed aphrodisiac. When we try to explain how Rove and his minions have managed to hold men like Reverend Conrad even as America's influence is waning and we are facing a painful recession, Huxley's insight seems prescient.

In his letter to Orwell congratulating him on "1984", Huxley predicted that "within the next generation ... world's leaders will discover that conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience."

He was wrong only in that the mass "hypnosis" is not being induced by chemicals but through the constant stimulants being blasted from our television sets and hate-talk radio. Over the last thirty years our public air-waves have been bombarded by the most bombastic nationalist propaganda. From as early as 1953 the government has been busy experimenting with various methods of mass control.

Speaking before a national meeting of Princeton alumni, former CIA director, Allen Dulles, distinguished two fronts in the then-current "battle for men's minds": a "first front" of mass indoctrination through censorship and propaganda, and a "second front" of individual "brainwashing" and "brain changing."

But the CIA did not invent these methods. When it comes to using fear and aggression to win and hold followers nothing is as old and effective as religion. Nor is it confined to "slavish" Christians. For instance, when the Soka Gakkai, the largest lay organization of Japanese Buddhists, accused priests of the Nichiren Shoshu of succumbing to corruption, rather than ask why priests needed to stay in luxury hotels and drive expensive Italian sports cars, the press vilified the Gakkai as venal and heretical usurpers turning Japanese sentiment harshly against them.

"there are widespread negative feelings in the community towards Soka Gakkai engendered by...relentless negative campaigns against the organization by [Japan's] magazines."--The Australian Financial Review

"The Japanese public is constantly exposed to the headlines on the hanging advertisements in trains and subways... Even if you don't read them but just kind of notice the slander and gossip day after day, a negative image begins to develop and grow, and you start to become suspicious..."--Noboru Okaniwa

The Buddhists' internecine struggles pale when compared to the kind of warfare being waged by our homegrown zealots against those "godless city-liberals". There's nothing like some "good old time religion" for whipping up hate and having a good time doing it. For the faithful in Palin's 'America' little has changed in the past sixty years. Here's H.L. Mencken on how the clergy went about rousing our good small town Christian back in the '30's.

"It is a terrific job to ram even the most elemental ideas into him. But it is always easy to scare him. That is the daily business of the evangelical pastors of our Republic. They are specialists in alarms and bugaboos... [T]he American peasant of today finds it vastly easier to claw into heaven than he used to. It is sufficient now to hate the Pope, to hate the Jews, to hate the scientists, to hate all foreigners, to hate whatever the cities yield to. These hatreds have been spread in the land by reverend pastors. They are the essence of the new Christianity, American style."

It makes one wonder if the kind of healing this country again so desperately needs is even possible.



It is hard to perceive how those who show nothing but anger and disdain for their fellow citizens feel happiness. Maybe for Palin Republicans it is enough to believe that God loves them. But watching that second video I suspect that despite all the happy smiles, Democrats won't be happy until we've made up for these last eight years. Perhaps then we can ramp down the hatred and go back to loving each other for a change.