-- Dom Hélder Câmara
And, yet, we are more aware than ever that nearly anything we say can (and will) be used against us in the court of…public opinion. Ironically, demonization is alive and well.
Fashionable or not, though, at some point we have to ask ourselves why demonization exists where it exists and what are the purposes it serves because, like a cancer, it is eating away at both the objects and subjects of it.
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 do the work of promoting what is right (especially in the context of what may be wrong). 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 whatever 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 its deception that makes us believe that it, in and of itself, is virtuous. If someone else is bad (now we use the term evil), it is simply easier to run with that conclusion than it is to work out what to do about it (not to mention remedy it).
Demonization is a beast that can never be fully satisfied — you just have to keep feeding it...because it feeds something in us.
Do we even need to say, then, that it is unhealthy...and unproductive? Apparently, we do. Because now it is so normalized that we’ve moved beyond the rhetorical nature of it to the manifestation of it. Just a little historical review will indicate what a dangerous path this is, for all involved (the perpetrated upon AND the perpetrators). It clouds both the mind and the spirit, so much so that it can become easy to no longer even detect it.
Demonization leads one to believe that the devouring will only continue in the intended direction. It misses the nature of its beastliness — that it doesn't really discriminate that well and that it will simply turn on the feeders themselves, in the end.
Be aware of what you are really hungry for, lest you end up eating something that will in turn eat you.
Just one example to consider...here.
