HOW THEY CONTROL US; PART TWO-HUMANIZING, DEHUMANIZING, AND EXAMPLING

"If the voice of prophets blew on flutes made of murdered children's bones. . . If they built a bridge of old men's dying groans - Ear of mankind occupied with small sound would you hear?

In my last post we explored the reasons why they want us to hate and fear in order to keep the party faithful in line. In this post I'm going to get into how they do it. The quote I used above is from the Jewish prayer book Siddur Sim Shalom and is often used in reference to the Holocaust. The opening sentence in this prayer gave me goosebumps the first time I read it and is still one of my favorite quotes. I think it defines well the point I'm going to try to make about humanizing and dehumanizing.

*HUMANIZING*

Humanizing, as the more clever of you may have already guessed, is the act of making something more human. In politics, it's the act of putting a face on an issue. Let's take the Iraq War for example; If you are on the side of ending the war, you would show the misery that war causes. One way to do this, as you've probably already seen, is to find a family in Iraq, preferably one that has lost their home, relatives, livelihood, etc. and interview them about how badly the war has affected them. By showing their faces and their grief you have "humanized" them and raised your empathy for them. Now, if you are on the other side, you would interview the families of people that were mistreated by Sadam and show their grief, the loss and torture of their relatives, how they were oppressed and mistreated and so on. By putting a face on it, the suffering seems more real and you are more likely to personalize it. Oddly enough, both sides criticize each other for using emotion to control you like this, even as both are doing it. Humanizing is not necessarily a bad thing either, but it is necessary for you to know when someone is trying to play on your emotions as opposed to your logic.

*DEHUMANIZING*

Dehumanizing is, yep you guessed it, the opposite of humanizing. Dehumanization is also, by far, more dangerous. It is responsible for some of the very worst atrocities that mankind has ever demonstrated on itself, and yet, we all do it. It's the act of reducing someone to a group instead of an individual. Blacks, Whites, women, men, Jews, Germans, Democrat, Republican, poor and rich have all seen it. It is the very essence of what makes it possible for us to hate people we have never even met. In political circles dehumanizing is absolutely necessary to keep you fearing, hating, and under control. But it is also almost impossible to eliminate from your vocabulary. We have to have a way to describe different people and their unique situations. To keep yourself from falling into the trap of dehumanizing people, your best defense is to try to avoid ever hating a group....period. There are, believe it or not, decent people in Germany that do not think you should kill all Jews, decent Muslims that do not adhere to radical Islamic beliefs and decent Liberals, Conservatives, Democrats and Republicans. Stop hating by group and I can guarantee you will be a better person and a clearer thinker for it.

*EXAMPLING*

If you truly want to see me turn into a howler monkey, make a stupid example. It drives me nearly mad to hear someone say, "Smoking doesn't cause cancer. My Aunt Nellie smoked her whole life and lived to be 112 years old." To save all of you the unsettling sight of me freaking out, understand this one absolute truth; an example proves only that something happened once. Do not try to use it as proof that all Republicans are evil, that all Christians rape little boys, that all Democrats fool around, that all blacks are violent, that all white people benefit from being white, that all Jews are miserly, or whatever stereotype you want to perpetuate. Even though it irritates me to no end, that doesn't stop Democrats or Republicans from using exampling to prove their points. For example; if I know it's true that most soldiers in Iraq support staying till Iraq is stable, but I want it to seem otherwise, all I have to do is turn to my good friend "exampling". To do this, I simply find several soldiers who agree with my side and then interview them one after another. The viewer is left thinking that all, or at least most, soldiers support leaving Iraq immediately. They can do this with any issue. Early on in my time at my University, we did a study on the effects of Welfare Reform on former Welfare recipients. Questions asked were; "Did they find jobs? Did suicide rates increase? Did drug use increase?" and, "How did their kids fare?" Governor Engler, Michigan's governor at the time, planned to use the study as proof of his successes in the upcoming election. There was one problem though. When the preliminary results came back, the answers weren't what he'd hoped. So Engler, being a masterful politician, used exampling in his commercials to show all the people who bettered their lives through Welfare reform with no ill results. End result? Your left with the impression that welfare reform benefited everyone and hurt no one.

So, now that you know some of the ways they manipulate you, you are armed with knowledge. Critique your sources and see if they are purposely trying to mislead you. Ask yourself why they used examples instead of facts or figures. Check to see if they are using humanizing and dehumanizing to play on your emotions. And most importantly, be aware that they want to win at all costs and have no problem causing hate and fear if it means they will get their way. H.C.

Next up; How They Control Us; Part Three- The Sources