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The United States of Denial
As the leader of the Western cultural failure
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ October 27, 2022
How many people do you know demanding hatred, bigotry, willful ignorance, oppression, or religious and political persecution? I know a few, but not many. The few are radical on single issues but not the gamut of hate attributed to the MAGA mobs.
This is not a denial that these people exist in the millions in America and elsewhere but that they are not as willing or easy to identify as you would expect, given our media coverage. The descent into medieval forms of hatred is such an exception in our diverse and open societies that most people continue to be baffled at the appearance of anachronistic bigotry.
The ones I know in America are predominantly religionists who have slipped easily into fascism. That is one of those things that is becoming obvious in hindsight.
Religion has become the hardcore addiction to hatred and the willful ignorance needed for bigotry and racism. That is the slippery slope to fascism, and brutal oppression, as authoritarian fascism, makes perfect sense if you feel some people need to be kept in their place.
Any religion dedicated to exclusion and them versus us is prone to this decay. Place that religion in less educated societies with limited diversity, and you have chronic racism hidden by few situations that would allow it to be seen. We all experience friendly people you accidentally discover are bigots because you do not happen to be the object of their bigotry.
The core belief of Western civilization, the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions, have the hubris of empire. The American empire inherited this, a primary but not exclusive source of cultural poison exacerbated by our fierce commitment to greed and planetary destruction.
During good times religion remains a harmless cultural element used for funerals, weddings, and birth rituals. However, as cultures disintegrate, religions lose their spiritual value and revert to nativism. Amazingly the term 'nativist' does not appear in our media even though that is a well-known disease afflicting Western societies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Instead, it has returned with racism and general…
