Demonization

Let's start here today, and see where this goes:

When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why people are hungry, they call me a Communist. 

-- Dom Hélder Câmara

At some point, we have to ask ourselves why demonization exists where it exists and what are the purposes it serves.

For one thing, it’s just so easy. It doesn’t involve real thinking. It doesn’t involve real work. It’s just far easier to point out what appears to be wrong than it is to work at promoting what is right. Even if “what is right” is the pretense for it, what is right and being (or doing) good is clearly not the same thing right now.

Moral superiority inevitably seems to require the demonization of what it tries to subordinate. In other words, the bar is not the bar — the bar is simply the separation between us and others.. Demonization is just a super handy way to do that and it lets us off a fairly serious hook. Part of what is insidious about it is the deception that makes us believe that it, in and of itself, is virtuous. if someone else is bad (now really called evil), it is simply easier to run with a conclusion than it is to work out what to do about it.

Demonization is a beast that can never be fully satisfied -/ you just have to keep feeding it.