I've seen a lot of people discussing exactly how Germany turned fascist, seen them try to draw parallels between current events and the rise of Nazi Germany.
I do not have the background to make any such comparisons.
Instead, I wanted to talk about something else. I wanted to talk about dehumanization. In the book Hitler's Willing Executioners, the author makes the claim that Germany was "pregnant with murder" towards Jews. That the anti-semitism that ultimately led to the Holocaust was deeply rooted and murderous, and Hitler merely tapped into that. There are, again, many scholar debates over the historical accuracy of this claim, but dehumanizing rhetoric is, I think, irrefutable. (They just argue over how much that rhetoric differed from any other anti-semitic rhetoric, and how much it was responsible for subsequent behavior, and so an and so forth.)
Dehumanization is, I think, something we should always be wary of. Mostly because it is never true. Given the spectrum of human nature, even the worst of the worst is still human... and we can - and should - have an honest debate over just what that means. What is owed to that worst of the worst, simply by virtue of our shared humanity? If you believe in God, what obligation do we have towards the part of God inherent in our fellows? (But that's for another time.)
Dehumanization allows us to unleash the worst in human nature. To step over our limits towards violence and murder. Things we would never do to our colleagues are somehow justified when faced with someone we consider subhuman.
And so, well, I think that explains why I find comments about DemocRATS or ReTHUGlicans so disturbing. It shows a willingness to demonize your opponents to such a degree that they are subhuman. If there's a spectrum for mass human behavior, similar to the one for individuals, the 'good' side would probably be living in peace and harmony... and the 'evil' side would be genocide. Dehumanizing rhetoric falls somewhere closer to the genocide side of the scale than the 'peace and harmony' side.
I've seen the memes, where someone jokes about how horrifed they are to discover their pregnant with a Democrat (or Republican).
Somehow it carries a depth of feeling that's greater than the joke/memes about Ford vs Chevy, or Cubs vs. Cardinals. Those rivalries are generally good natured, both sides able to joke around and relate to each other even as they 'oppose' each other...
It's not like that with the Republican and Democratic memes. There's a real sense that anyone of the opposite party is the lowest of the low, not worth the normal consideration you would give to a random stranger.
(This is not to say they're both equivalent. I do have my biases, and as an analogy in an earlier post showed I can understand why at least one side feels the way they do. And, as someone taught that Jesus said "love thy neighbor as thyself", "judge not lest ye be judged", "first remove the beam out of your eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye", who praised the Good Samaritan and exemplified spending time with prostitutes, tax collectors, who was killed as a common criminal, etc... I find it disturbing that people who claim they follow that self-same Jesus can be so uncompassionate, unmerciful, and judgemental. But then, there I am again... judging others. At the same time, I'm disturbed by the willingness to punch Nazis, by the widely accepted belief that debating them is pointless and just gives them more power, and that it's perfectly justified to hate on and demonize anyone who isn't on the 'right' side. It's a very dangerous mentality, yet another example of dehumanization, and it's worrisome no matter what the political affiliation.)
Btw, this dehumanizing rhetoric goes for more than just political affiliation. Mexicans and 'illegal immigrants' are talked about in a similar fashion, to the point where many people don't even seem to distinguish between illegal immigrants and regular immigrants.
As someone pointed out once - the immigrant caravan is not full of illegal immigrants if they're trying to go through the legal process of requesting asylum. And if they're not trying to cross the border illegally, or tried to cross it legally first and got told the checkpoint was closed, then the crisis requires providing enough manpower to sort through all the claims in a timely fashion. (And how many of the current detainees tried going through a normal border crossing, vs. were caught after they'd tried, were told the border was closed, and only then tried to cross our border illegally? And while I haven't yet had the discussion on what we owe our fellow human beings, even if/when they do wrong, someone coming to our border to request asylum has not actually done anything wrong in the first place... so none of those arguments should be relevant, and we should treat the perfectly legal asylum-seekers with decency and courtesy as we process their claims.)
But we all know all that. The issue, the part that should raise red flags to everyone, is that some Americans aren't really worried about the legality of these immigrants. They're concerned about the whole browning of America, and the loss of a white majority, and they see any non-white potential immigrant as a threat. Even if they're immigrating legally.
Never mind our long and proud tradition of accepting immigrants (after all, there's also a long and not-so-proud tradition of resenting them and fearing them.)
Anyways.
What led to this series of posts was that I, yet again, came across a report discussing terrible conditions at the detention facilities. I saw someone on twitter asking for people to call a detention center and pressure them to give treatment (or release) an elderly grandfather with Alzheimers. I've heard reports about pregnant women having miscarriages because of poor treatment (and if you're pro-life and not disturbed by that then you're a hypocrite.)
I wrote this post because I've been hearing various such stories, off and on, for a while now. Kids in cages, more or less. People held in facilities lacking in beds, separating families and trying to place the kids with white families, and other things.
And... and I'm trying to find a job right now, I'm worried about making a living. I live hundreds of miles from the border...
And so I try to fight the urge to, well... to feel that sense of something wrong, and then forget about it a minute later.
It's not right. I don't really know what to do about it. I mean, I vote, of course. But it's not like I've got a detention center near me to go protest at. And (as the job hunting bit ought to imply) I'm not really in a position to go sending money to a human rights organization or anything. (Also, I'd want to research any charity I donate too, as there's a nasty record of people getting rich and not really helping anyone... but research like that takes work, too.)
It disturbs me. The dehumanization. The detention centers... which, as the Stanford prison experiment shows, is a situation just ripe for abuse. You need strong leadership to prevent that.
The tendency for all of us to turn a blind eye to it. You see stories, on occasion, but they don't really seem to get much traction. Too many people have dehumanized immigrants (illegal or not) to the point where they're willing to look the other way, no matter what horror stories they hear.
They'll justify it as "the detainee shouldn't have tried coming here in the first place. Shouldn't have brought their children. Shouldn't have gotten pregnant."
Never mind that, when you choose to detain someone... to prevent them from seeking out the medical care they might otherwise have... you have an obligation to them.
Do we even know how much of this 'crisis' could be managed by providing more judges and lawyers to process anyone coming through the perfectly legal border checkpoint?
But above and beyond all that, why are so many Americans willing to forego our principles and values and look the other way when it comes to human beings who are trying to immigrate, many of them legally.
I do not have the background to make any such comparisons.
Instead, I wanted to talk about something else. I wanted to talk about dehumanization. In the book Hitler's Willing Executioners, the author makes the claim that Germany was "pregnant with murder" towards Jews. That the anti-semitism that ultimately led to the Holocaust was deeply rooted and murderous, and Hitler merely tapped into that. There are, again, many scholar debates over the historical accuracy of this claim, but dehumanizing rhetoric is, I think, irrefutable. (They just argue over how much that rhetoric differed from any other anti-semitic rhetoric, and how much it was responsible for subsequent behavior, and so an and so forth.)
Dehumanization is, I think, something we should always be wary of. Mostly because it is never true. Given the spectrum of human nature, even the worst of the worst is still human... and we can - and should - have an honest debate over just what that means. What is owed to that worst of the worst, simply by virtue of our shared humanity? If you believe in God, what obligation do we have towards the part of God inherent in our fellows? (But that's for another time.)
Dehumanization allows us to unleash the worst in human nature. To step over our limits towards violence and murder. Things we would never do to our colleagues are somehow justified when faced with someone we consider subhuman.
And so, well, I think that explains why I find comments about DemocRATS or ReTHUGlicans so disturbing. It shows a willingness to demonize your opponents to such a degree that they are subhuman. If there's a spectrum for mass human behavior, similar to the one for individuals, the 'good' side would probably be living in peace and harmony... and the 'evil' side would be genocide. Dehumanizing rhetoric falls somewhere closer to the genocide side of the scale than the 'peace and harmony' side.
I've seen the memes, where someone jokes about how horrifed they are to discover their pregnant with a Democrat (or Republican).
Somehow it carries a depth of feeling that's greater than the joke/memes about Ford vs Chevy, or Cubs vs. Cardinals. Those rivalries are generally good natured, both sides able to joke around and relate to each other even as they 'oppose' each other...
It's not like that with the Republican and Democratic memes. There's a real sense that anyone of the opposite party is the lowest of the low, not worth the normal consideration you would give to a random stranger.
(This is not to say they're both equivalent. I do have my biases, and as an analogy in an earlier post showed I can understand why at least one side feels the way they do. And, as someone taught that Jesus said "love thy neighbor as thyself", "judge not lest ye be judged", "first remove the beam out of your eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye", who praised the Good Samaritan and exemplified spending time with prostitutes, tax collectors, who was killed as a common criminal, etc... I find it disturbing that people who claim they follow that self-same Jesus can be so uncompassionate, unmerciful, and judgemental. But then, there I am again... judging others. At the same time, I'm disturbed by the willingness to punch Nazis, by the widely accepted belief that debating them is pointless and just gives them more power, and that it's perfectly justified to hate on and demonize anyone who isn't on the 'right' side. It's a very dangerous mentality, yet another example of dehumanization, and it's worrisome no matter what the political affiliation.)
Btw, this dehumanizing rhetoric goes for more than just political affiliation. Mexicans and 'illegal immigrants' are talked about in a similar fashion, to the point where many people don't even seem to distinguish between illegal immigrants and regular immigrants.
As someone pointed out once - the immigrant caravan is not full of illegal immigrants if they're trying to go through the legal process of requesting asylum. And if they're not trying to cross the border illegally, or tried to cross it legally first and got told the checkpoint was closed, then the crisis requires providing enough manpower to sort through all the claims in a timely fashion. (And how many of the current detainees tried going through a normal border crossing, vs. were caught after they'd tried, were told the border was closed, and only then tried to cross our border illegally? And while I haven't yet had the discussion on what we owe our fellow human beings, even if/when they do wrong, someone coming to our border to request asylum has not actually done anything wrong in the first place... so none of those arguments should be relevant, and we should treat the perfectly legal asylum-seekers with decency and courtesy as we process their claims.)
But we all know all that. The issue, the part that should raise red flags to everyone, is that some Americans aren't really worried about the legality of these immigrants. They're concerned about the whole browning of America, and the loss of a white majority, and they see any non-white potential immigrant as a threat. Even if they're immigrating legally.
Never mind our long and proud tradition of accepting immigrants (after all, there's also a long and not-so-proud tradition of resenting them and fearing them.)
Anyways.
What led to this series of posts was that I, yet again, came across a report discussing terrible conditions at the detention facilities. I saw someone on twitter asking for people to call a detention center and pressure them to give treatment (or release) an elderly grandfather with Alzheimers. I've heard reports about pregnant women having miscarriages because of poor treatment (and if you're pro-life and not disturbed by that then you're a hypocrite.)
I wrote this post because I've been hearing various such stories, off and on, for a while now. Kids in cages, more or less. People held in facilities lacking in beds, separating families and trying to place the kids with white families, and other things.
And... and I'm trying to find a job right now, I'm worried about making a living. I live hundreds of miles from the border...
And so I try to fight the urge to, well... to feel that sense of something wrong, and then forget about it a minute later.
It's not right. I don't really know what to do about it. I mean, I vote, of course. But it's not like I've got a detention center near me to go protest at. And (as the job hunting bit ought to imply) I'm not really in a position to go sending money to a human rights organization or anything. (Also, I'd want to research any charity I donate too, as there's a nasty record of people getting rich and not really helping anyone... but research like that takes work, too.)
It disturbs me. The dehumanization. The detention centers... which, as the Stanford prison experiment shows, is a situation just ripe for abuse. You need strong leadership to prevent that.
The tendency for all of us to turn a blind eye to it. You see stories, on occasion, but they don't really seem to get much traction. Too many people have dehumanized immigrants (illegal or not) to the point where they're willing to look the other way, no matter what horror stories they hear.
They'll justify it as "the detainee shouldn't have tried coming here in the first place. Shouldn't have brought their children. Shouldn't have gotten pregnant."
Never mind that, when you choose to detain someone... to prevent them from seeking out the medical care they might otherwise have... you have an obligation to them.
Do we even know how much of this 'crisis' could be managed by providing more judges and lawyers to process anyone coming through the perfectly legal border checkpoint?
But above and beyond all that, why are so many Americans willing to forego our principles and values and look the other way when it comes to human beings who are trying to immigrate, many of them legally.
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