Imagine if your first thought every day is to decide who to condemn, who to rant against, who to proscribe, eliminate, or destroy.

Why?

Fear? Shame? Anger?

A shark eats because it is hungry. It doesn't hate you. It won't normally take a bite out of you -- unless you just happen to look like what it normally eats if wearing a shiny, sparkly swimsuit or if you look like a seal in the water.

Haters, on the other hand, either want you to be like them, think like them, and walk, talk, and act like them -- or, if that is not possible, end your existence.

Some people spend an awful lot of time, effort, and resources trying to control what they cannot control and then destroy what they cannot.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 04/02/2022 11:08AM by anybody.

I think in a lot of cases, tolerance is a matter of people living or working with those who are different from them, and getting used to it. For instance, in Mormonism, there was a long, institutional history of intolerance for LBGTQ+ individuals, and this was reflected in familial intolerance for gay children. But there were also certain families who stepped up because they love their gay children, and their love was stronger than their fear. Very slowly, things have been changing for the better.

In small, closed, communities there is a deep suspicion of those who are different, and to a limited degree, I get that, because community cohesion has historically been a matter of survival for humans.

Perhaps others can comment, but I see the U.S. and western Europe as being engaged in a relatively short-term experiment in having large, diverse groups of people living and working together successfully. I don't think we should be surprised that there have been so many bumps in the road. I'm trying to think of other western cultures where such large, diverse groups of people were expected to get along. Maybe ancient Rome, and Great Britain?

For sure!

I disagree, summer. Nation-states, meaning polities in which the state lines up with the nation (racial, ethnic, cultural, religious groups) have always been exceptionally rare. For most of human history governments controlled territories in which many groups co-existed.

Rome is a great example, but so too was early China, and perhaps the greatest instances of relatively modern communities like this were the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and especially the Austrian Empire. India during the Raj and even today is an interesting case.

The curse--well, one of the curses--of the modern world is the notion that a state is not legitimate unless its borders line up with national boundaries, for most of the world is not locally homogeneous.

Here's a map of Indian ethnicities today:

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-0acc98cfda70a02acd8910022c89c8af-c

Ethnicity in the Austrian Empire:

https://ww1blog.osborneink.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/ethnicmapaustria.gif

The seeds of many atrocities lie in the pernicious notion of national unity, for it is what led to many, many modern genocides.

I believe that this is a genetically driven condition over which there is little if any control available.
Some humans are just programmed to hate.

How would you know how to hate them?

Because not only are they not like you (you've never heard of them, but they've also been HIDING (you've never heard of them ;-).

I agree with you, Anybody. I can't understand it from the inside, but I can see how it works. And I'm pretty sure much of it is learned, from parents and/or right-wing media with really loud dog whistles...

thedesertrat1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I believe that this is a genetically driven
> condition over which there is little if any
> control available.
> Some humans are just programmed to hate.

"Original sin is the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith." (Reinhold Niebuhr)

thedesertrat1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I believe that this is a genetically driven
> condition over which there is little if any
> control available.
> Some humans are just programmed to hate.

I don't think it's "genetically driven" in the way that it's out of our own control. It's like that old Law & Order episode where a male child born of rape grows up to become a rapist himself. His defence counsel's strategy is to claim he couldn't help being a serial rapist because the tendency was in his genes. The cops didn't buy it and neither did the jury and the guy was convicted. They did leave the question out there: could the guy escape the monstrous genetic imprint contributed by his rapist father. It was indicated that the man chose his own destiny, despite any negative contribution by one parent.

Interesting debate and perhaps not fully answered yet. I think most people would want to believe we do have control over our own actions no matter how our genes are mingled. Whether or not that's true is being explored with MRI scanning etc. It would be amazing if concrete answers could be discovered. Maybe not in our lifetimes.

From Psychology Today re the psychology of hate (March/17):

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/nurturing-self-compassion/201703/the-psychology-hate

Psychologist Bernard Golden says: "Acts of hate are attempts to distract oneself from feelings such as helplessness, powerlessness, injustice, inadequacy and shame. Hate is grounded in some sense of perceived threat. It is an attitude that can give rise to hostility and aggression toward individuals or groups. Like much of anger, it is a reaction to and distraction from some form of inner pain. The individual consumed by hate may believe that the only way to regain some sense of power over his or her pain is to preemptively strike out at others. In this context, each moment of hate is a temporary reprieve from inner suffering."

“The answer to why we hate, according to Silvia Dutchevici, LCSW, president and founder of the Critical Therapy Center, lies not only in our psychological makeup or family history, but also in our cultural and political history. “We live in a war culture that promotes violence, in which competition is a way of life,” she says. “We fear connecting because it requires us to reveal something about ourselves. We are taught to hate the enemy — meaning anyone different than us — which leaves little room for vulnerability and an exploration of hate through empathic discourse and understanding. In our current society, one is more ready to fight than to resolve conflict. Peace is seldom the option.”

“Hatred has to be learned, Golden says: “We are all born with the capacity for aggression as well as compassion. Which tendencies we embrace requires mindful choice by individuals, families, communities and our culture in general. The key to overcoming hate is education: at home, in schools, and in the community.”

“According to Dutchevici, facing the fear of being vulnerable and utterly human is what allows us to connect, to feel, and ultimately, to love. She suggests creating “cracks in the system.” These cracks can be as simple as connecting to your neighbor, talking with a friend, starting a protest, or even going to therapy and connecting with an ‘Other.’ It is through these acts that one can understand hate and love.”

“In other words, compassion towards others is the true context that heals.”


Scientific American (August/09) – The Origin of Hatred:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-origin-of-hatred/

“If love is said to come from the heart, what about hate? Along with music, religion, irony and a host of other complex concepts, researchers are on the hunt for the neurological underpinnings of hatred."

“Some commonalities with love, however, are striking, the study authors note. The areas of the putamen and insula that are activated by individual hate are the same as those for romantic love. "This linkage may account for why love and hate are so closely linked to each other in life," they wrote…”

The attempt to understand neural connections is in early stages and is ongoing.

From the song ‘Walk a Mile in my Shoes’: “Before you abuse, criticize and accuse, walk a mile in my shoes.” That’s what I try to do, not always successfully but the thought and effort are most often worth it.

I think this approach can allay the tendency to hate first and never ask questions.

Scientists have yet to nail down proof on whether hatred is innate or learned, if they ever can. Perhaps it’s a combination of both. But I think it’s worthwhile to strive to understand more and hate less. It would be a start.

Otis Clay: Walk a Mile in my Shoes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVFdc2bRwUY



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/02/2022 12:54PM by Nightingale.

Wow, Nightingale, that Psychology Today quote is packed full of wisdom.

Thanks :-)

Have a great weekend

Tom

Hi Tom. Yes, that was an interesting article. I always have to import my wisdom, and hope some of it sticks inside my own head.

You too - have a great weekend in your lovely city that I dearly hope I will see again sometime.

I flew to Paris for a weekend while visiting all my English relatives a good while back. I have a terrible fear of heights but forced myself to go up the Eiffel Tower because iconic, and it was well worth the effort for the view and the overall incredible memorable experience. I even eventually got myself over to the lookout point. Didn't look down though.

Worth it too for tous les bons vins et toute la bonne nourriture. The vins, the vins. :)

I disgraced myself too though, over and above having to sit on the sidewalk outside instead of touring Notre Dame due to not feeling well that weekend, by asking an aged street vendor ou est la Bastille? He spit on the sidewalk at my feet while mumbling words I was glad I couldn't translate. I know, ignorant Anglaise doesn't know the despised structure is long demolished. Well, I know now!

I did get a surprisingly flattering sketch done by a street artist though, now among my prized possessions and memories. That kind of made up for the old guy and the Bastille. It's easy to give offence when you're bumbling around a foreign city, especially when it comes to historical realities.

That's one historical lesson I won't easily forget.

What is that expression —-“Me thinks thou protesteths too muchly.”

For one driven by ideology/belief, the world becomes an "us" (believers) versus "them" (non/wrong-believers).

Hatred for the "other" is but one consequence.
There are of course many other consequences.

It seems that many things that get labeled as “hate” is, in reality, fear.

Fear is very powerful and drives people to do and say irrational things.

I see a lot of actions in the world that I don't like. Sometimes these hurt others. I don't automatically ascribe hate to be the underlying cause of the action simply because I don't agree with what was done or said or even feel that is egregious.

The word hate is thrown around way too much to devalue others when we don't agree with what they are doing. That falls into the category of cutting someone off at the knees to make yourself appear to be taller. Which is what Mormonism and religion in general do.

Unless we push ourselves to become world leaders, in the end all we have is our own little circle. Most everyone has a facade--especially those who claim to be "open books". Getting past that and really getting to know each other is the key. Then we see the actions as coming from misinformation, a need to control, peer pressure, fear of being last, selfishness, a need to feel special and superior, and on and on. If there is any hate in those, it is that the person hates themselves and is flailing about attempting to feel like a winner.

I just see humans as mostly good, but often messes. Just trying to find their way in a constantly changing world. But like summer points out--we are adaptable if slow to be such.

I have not met anyone yet who fits the description of the opening line of your post whose goal is to cause harm just for harm's sake--who loves to hate. Well, perhaps Dallin Oaks, and uh, Bednar . . . The give reason to be suspicious.

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I just see humans as mostly good, but often
> messes. Just trying to find their way in a
> constantly changing world.

Yes. This.

I think you have it backwards, anybody. Humans are not programed to hate, they are programed to love.

That's an overstatement, yes. But what I mean is that all social animals want desperately to fit into a group. For reasons of survival--food, protection, help when an individual is sick or old, emotional security--what social animals dread most is isolation and ostracization. So they naturally prioritize the group to which they belong, or want to belong, and view other groups as potential threats competing for the same limited resources.

It's the behavior of pack animals and you see it all the time in nature. Our programing in favor of "us" produces as a byproduct a hostility to "them."

I don't think that's "love" in any way, shape or form.

The Inquisition claimed they acted out of "love," but they knew they were just imposing their will by force

"The Name Of The Rose" Confession From Torture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iFSTUnf8xQ


You have to be a cold, totally detached psychopath to get up every day and ruin lives for no reason.

Here's the beginning of the "Checkist" (1992) about the local KGB goon whose job was to run the local execution squad in Russian town after the revolution:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_RSDqBn0bA

Notice how bored they are by killing people.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/02/2022 04:25PM by anybody.

Perhaps you should reread what I wrote.

I didn't say the "in" people love the "out" people. I said precisely the opposite.

My purpose was to explain how hate (your word) and hostility (my word, which I viewed as synonymous with yours) are such integral parts of human character.

Your examples don't countervail my argument. They exemplify it.

You insist on reading disagreement into my agreeing with you. I do not understand that.

Yep. I think you and I are usually on the same page and I understand the emotion.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Our programing in favor
> of "us" produces as a byproduct a hostility to
> "them."
===============================

Yup.

So the only way "out of the trap" is knowledge of the vulnerability plus an independence of intellect.

Hate can be kinda fun. I’m bored. Let’s go get that bastard!

Anybody, It's not that I don't want to hear your opinions, but I would like to hear more about you, yourself.

When I read your comments abut Kabul months ago, I was very impressed by you--your intelligence.

But as an exmo, I'd like to hear more about your reasons for leaving the cult, your family (we hear about Done & Done's family, Cl2's brothers, and God knows you've heard about my brother.) But, stuff you like--what do you collect?

We know that you are 6'2" tall. I'm envious. I'd buy a pair of skinny jeans and rock those legs like Marylin Monroe rocks a beauty mark.

You hinted at your dad's medical books. Was he a doctor? Did you ever want to go into that profession?

Do you like ranch dressing? Are you a vegan?

I suspect that our "anybody" is somebody very worth knowing more about.

> I suspect that our "anybody" is somebody very
> worth knowing more about.

I agree 100%.

ETA: Not in the sense that we "need" to know more about her but in the sense that she must be a fascinating person.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/02/2022 09:37PM by Lot's Wife.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ETA: Not in the sense that we "need" to know more
> about her but in the sense that she must be a
> fascinating person.


Yes, that !

Kathleen Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> We know that you are 6'2" tall.

Wow. I've always felt like a giant at 5'9". There are a lot of short guys out there. It was excruciating at school. Now it's fine as I can reach all the high cupboards.

I climbed up a step ladder in order to stand on top of the washing machine in order to reach a box on a shelf . . . . . . . ended badly.

Ouch!

Ouch indeed. I thought my arm was broken.

. . Where was my tall and lanky mom when I needed her ?

. . . tall and lanky mom . . . . then why am I so short ?

. . . . . . I have an extra vertebra and I'm still too short to reach anything.

It's a pain in the neck to always have to ask a taller person. It's that or get some reaching device or fall off the washer. One or the other.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/2022 01:44AM by Kathleen.

Kathleen Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Anybody, It's not that I don't want to hear your
> opinions, but I would like to hear more about you,
> yourself.
>
> When I read your comments abut Kabul months ago, I
> was very impressed by you--your intelligence.
>
> But as an exmo, I'd like to hear more about your
> reasons for leaving the cult, your family (we hear
> about Done & Done's family, Cl2's brothers, and
> God knows you've heard about my brother.) But,
> stuff you like--what do you collect?
>
> We know that you are 6'2" tall. I'm envious. I'd
> buy a pair of skinny jeans and rock those legs
> like Marylin Monroe rocks a beauty mark.
>
> You hinted at your dad's medical books. Was he a
> doctor? Did you ever want to go into that
> profession?
>
> Do you like ranch dressing? Are you a vegan?
>
> I suspect that our "anybody" is somebody very
> worth knowing more about.


My dad was in the Army Medical Corps, born back East, but I grew up mostly in CO and NM, studied astrophysics and engineering and took ancient languages in school. Never dated in high school and for some weird reason dated a lot of Mormon guys right after college and almost married one -- that's as close as I ever got to the cult. I'm a non-religious non-believer, never believed a word of it, and I knew it was weird to begin with, but not as nuts and a total fraud as I found out. I'm always trying to find out what I don't know, so read a lot of books, both old and new. I'd hoped that social media in the Information Age would destroy Mormonism, but it's just too small of a cult for people to get worked up about nowadays, except for polygamy and the FLDS.


I didn't go into academia but aerospace and defence instead, and I have to live and work in places in red states on or near military bases and I have to go quite a ways to have any kind of life. It's not enough for evangelicals to have their own little world like Mormonism. They want to take over. They want to dominate. I work with a lot of them. They aren't stupid by a long shot, but they can't shake their upbringing and are addicted to ignorance, hatred, and fear and religious fundies give them what they want. I never thought in my wildest dreams growing up that I'd ever have to worry about a christo-fascist takeover of America as in Heinlein's "If This Goes On" or "The Handmaid's Tale," but it's no longer a remote possibility. Today, it's a terrifyingly real one.


As for me, I'm weird by most people's standards. My dad taught me how to shoot, hunt and fish, but I'm not a "redneck." My mother was a very high-class Southern Belle type who wanted me to be a country club debutante, but I refused. She was the one who insisted I go back East to prep school and ride English, not Western and so on. Not too many women fly aeroplanes, work on 4x4 trucks, like classical music and avant-garde experimental theatre, electronic, classical, and techno/trance music, latex, leather, and haute-couture fashion, art, ancient, classic, and modern literature, and old and new science fiction movies. I'm liberal and single with dogs and cats.


And yes, I'm over six feet two and I love heels. I can even drive a manual 4x4 truck with a stick shift to the symphony wearing high heels and an evening dress :)



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/2022 02:21AM by anybody.

Haha, I knew it!

You and I have a lot in common, and while it's too late for me there's still time for you to get help.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/2022 03:01AM by Lot's Wife.

and make computers solve funky math problems that simulate things that usually fly, blow up, or go into outer space.


My dad told me he could tell that I liked rockets and aeroplanes when I was five years old, so he didn't push me to go into medicine. I did observe a few operations and assisted at more than a few autopsies. Most of the kids I grew up with wanted to be singers or rock stars. I wanted to be Emma Peel.


My mother told me she couldn't do a thing with me and that I was beyond help.

Anybody, it was such a joy reading about you. There are fascinating people on this board. I have another poster's painting on my mantle. Recently dinner guests were so enthralled by his painting that they let the soup get cold. Talented and inspiring people here.

You said, "My dad told me he could tell that I liked rockets and aeroplanes when I was five years old, so he didn't push me to go into medicine." How lucky you were.

And yes, was Emma Peel not the best ? I used to love those outfits she wore.

Thanks for filling us in on part of your very interesting life. :)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/2022 02:45PM by Kathleen.

There once was a thread here that advocated a bizarre scientific theory. I replied that there were people on this board who knew physics well enough to destroy the argument in no time flat. I had one or two specific people in mind but strongly suspected, which is to say "knew," that others had the background as well given what they have written on various topics. You were one of my suspects.

The logic, the familiarity with various publications, the word choice: whether dressed as a bespectacled librarian or in underworld latex, a thinker betrays herself as soon as she opens her mouth.

One of the many reasons I will always look up to you, anybody: I'm 5'8" ;-)

For "not much to tell" there sure seemed to be a lot! Nice to met you Anybody. In my book, you are Somebody.

anybody Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> . . . astrophysics and engineering and took ancient
> languages in school. Never dated in high school
> . . . Not too many women fly aeroplanes, work on 4x4 trucks,
> like classical music and avant-garde experimental
> theatre, electronic, classical, and techno/trance
> music, latex, leather, and haute-couture fashion,
> art, ancient, classic, and modern literature, . . . I'm liberal
> and single with dogs and cats . . . over six feet two and I love heels.
> I can even drive a manual 4x4 truck with a stick
> shift to the symphony wearing high heels and an
> evening dress :)
===============================

Definitely a doesn't-exist-in-the-real-world-impossible-to-find 'my type.'
--We'd get along swimmingly ;-)

anybody, you sound awesome! Thanks for sharing.

My observations while working in a scientific pharma environment in the South align with yours.

I loved reading this life sketch, anybody.

It's poetry. Music. A book.

Stan is in charge

Didn't you recently create a post hypothisizing the expulsion of fundies to their own country?

Wasn't that rant driven by hate of a kind?

We all hate, it's a human trait, and at least some of our actions are driven by it.

What matters to our character and integrity is who, what, and how we hate.

Humberto Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Didn't you recently create a post hypothisizing
> the expulsion of fundies to their own country?
>
> Wasn't that rant driven by hate of a kind?
>
> We all hate, it's a human trait, and at least some
> of our actions are driven by it.
>
> What matters to our character and integrity is
> who, what, and how we hate.


No, it's not. It was in response to the pre-Civil War type compromises that didn't work. Why? Because the South didn't really want to leave, they wanted to dominate. It wasn't enough for them to have their "peculiar institution" tied to a single region. They wanted it everywhere.

The same is true with today's "christian" dominionists. I don't really care what they think or believe or what kind of church they want to go to or how they run their lives. But that's not enough. They can't accept a tolerant, secular, science and fact based public sphere where they don't run the show, and they have to respect other viewpoints just as the rest of us respect their right to live as they see fit. That's the difference. No matter how much you try to compromise with them, it's never enough. It's either their way or no way at all. They'd never accept their own little corner of America. They want it all. Not only that, but they think that "God" or somebody "promised" it to them and them only to "rule" over as in the Book of Genesis.

So, as much as I want for them just to go away and stop trying to drag us back a hundred years, they won't -- because they think they are on a mission from "God."

I have complex thought about why hate exists in the world and how the psychology of hatred works.

I used to hate “anti-mormons” but any time I got close to saying who “they” were, the humanity of the people at whom I was pointing a finger always smote me. I can’t say I ever met an anti-Mormon the way I used to imagine them. No human being actually operates the way I thought anti-Mormon hatred worked.

Very interesting comment. Dold-Dodger.

"The humanity of the people."

That's the best measure of what's going on in general.

Just when I'm reading the article linked on another thread about the obvious, verifiable, lack of charity of Mormon Church leaders.

How can they justify that? How can they live with themselves?

There is a lot of thoughtful wisdom in this thread. I especially liked Nightingale's research and LW's thinking.

Taking all of this into consideration, I would posit that hate is driven by fear. And while I can't comment on individual fears, perhaps I can comment on the fears that are driving the intolerance that Anybody, and many others, including myself, see.

In the case of the growing Fascist movement in the U.S., I think that the overriding fear is the fear of losing both power and control, especially among white men. With the increasing number of minorities (it is estimated that by 2038, whites willno longer be the dominant racial group in the U.S.), many white people feel that they will no longer be in control of the narrative. They fear that many of the privleges they have had in the past (though few can name them) will be lost, and that black, brown, red, and yellow people will change the laws and cultural norms to favor their own groups. Many older white males fear that their sons and daughters and grandchildren will not have access to the same resources that they did and that their offspring will fall into the poverty that currently besets many of darker skin colors in this country. They also fear that American Protestantism, with its roots in Calvinist and Baptist thinking, is now being replaced by a secularism that literally preaches a tolerance towards almost everyone, certainly all groups. Though LW's comment about most countries being multiracial and diverse are quite correct, one finds that in nearly all of the countries in this world, one group, usually based on race or ethnicity, dominates the other groups living within that country, and many white people in the U.S, though perhaps not a majority, are absolutely scared that their dominance over other groups is coming to an end.

In other words, it is the fear of rapid social change that is seeing the rise of hatred by many in this nation. And those who hate are determined to stop the oncoming changes--even if they have to destroy (or transform) the entire United States government to do it.

This is good.

I would add, however, that there's an extraordinarily important factor underlying your analysis: the collapse of the old social contract, according to which Americans believed that their economic future would be bright, their children better off than they, and society would take care of everyone (or at least the majority ethnicity). Imagine as precedent the effects of the Great Depression on all the democracies' politics. The US came out of that disaster the best off, but even there socialism and communism strengthened and the government was forced to move left to defange the anti-capitalist and anti-democratic movement; Great Britain and France were hurt more deeply; and everyone knows what happened to the Weimar Republic.

Something like that has happened in recent decades in the US. Middle-class incomes have stagnated since the early 1980s, and a series of financial crises have impoverished millions even as the elite of both parties have done fine. The epitome of that was the Great Recession that began in 2007 and by some measures has yet to be overcome. The result has been the discrediting of the social contract, a sense of betrayal, an unwonted fear of the future, and an intensified quest for peoples to blame. In such circumstances simmering ethnic differences intensify and those who feel most in danger of losing their privileges turn towards authoritarianism.

We've seen this movie before.

LW, I think WW2 gave greater impetus to American growth than just the Depression. Perhaps the two events are linked enough to be the whole. Certainly the US was the greatest winner of WW2 as it emerged as the solitary world power, economically and politically. Of the victors I think Britain faired the worst.

I didn't mean to imply that the Depression drove growth. The Depression eviscerated demand and hence growth. The various public works projects of the 1930s didn't solve the problem in part because monetary policy was so backward at the time. WWII drove growth everywhere and the US was the unique beneficiary as armament and then recovery contributed enormously to the economy.

It was a combination, throughout the allied world, of a determination to reward workers and accelerating growth that informed the new social contracts. Those were more or less fulfilled while the Western economies were in the high-growth recovery phase but the momentum was lost by the 1980s. My reference to the Depression was therefore not as an engine of growth but rather as a driver of popular discontent and political polarization of the sort we see today.

I'm going to write my responses to two different posts here.

First, a lot of my thinking on this issue is heavily based on an article written back in 2017 for The Atlantic.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-nationalists-delusion/546356/

I've never placed a link for it on this Board as it doesn't necessarily pertain to religion; yet the above article has a lot to say about the topic that Anybody brought up and why I'm convinced that racial issues, more than economic issues, are at the heart of today's hatred in the U.S.

With regard to Kentish's post and LW's response to it, it should be remembered that the U.S. was the only country heavily involved in WWII that was relatively unscathed at the end of the war. None of the states were bomved (Hawaii was not a state when Pearl Harbor was attacked), and the Truman administration opted to use available funds to rebuild the economies of the war-torn countries in western Europe and asia, including both Germany and Japan. This was an excellent and farsighted move that most victors in most wars would not have done and still don't do today.

What actually turned the U.S. economy around was many things but ultimately the growth of the union movement had a lot to do with it. Though many negative things have been said about unions (and I've agreed with some of them), the fact is that the good jobs with those high earnings and great retirement benefits (this was before 401(k)s and moving jobs off the coast) were because of victories won by the unions, particularly in the automotive industry, during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Most business owners and industrialists hated both the unions and the regulations and laws passed by both the FDR and Truman administrations, but it was those exact benefits that fueled the major economic growth during the 1950s and 1960s, and it is the demise of the unions that is at least partly to blame for the incredible inequalities that are seen today.

I disagree on the economics.

Unions thrive when the demand for labor is high, not when that demand is weak. There were actually four New Deals (Conrad Black's biography of FDR is best here, and Eichengreen's Golden Fetters), and the first three failed. What worked was the fourth one: rearmament. It was big increases in military spending that produced the demand that invigorated the unions.

After the war global reconstruction plus the high rate of new household formation kept that demand strong. But when those two engines of growth decelerated in the late 1970s and 1980s, unions began to decline. They've been moribund for nearly three decades now.

Union strength is thus a reflection of strong demand, not a driver of it. In a depression or a serious recession, no change in government regulation is going to do much for organized labor in a free economy.

I'm going to add a comment about the racism. In my view the racism has always been present in the US, as in many other countries, simmering under the surface. But often it doesn't produce societal and political change.

That's where economic shocks come in. They make average people, people of no particular racism, panic. And in that panic they become aware of feelings they may not have recognized before or that they had with various degrees of intention suppressed. That's why the Depression brought such an acute change in German politics, a sharp turn towards xeonophobia and anti-semitism and other noxious ideas.

Put simply, when people are frightened about the future, they start looking for scapegoats and the easy answer of authoritarianism.

One simple reason is that people are lazy. Too lazy to study, too lazy to look outside of their own little bubble. That is why it is easy to make money off of it.

Anybody is 100% correct with this. A lot of people find it hard to accept but it is the way they think.

"The same is true with today's "christian" dominionists. I don't really care what they think or believe or what kind of church they want to go to or how they run their lives. But that's not enough. They can't accept a tolerant, secular, science and fact based public sphere where they don't run the show, and they have to respect other viewpoints just as the rest of us respect their right to live as they see fit. That's the difference. No matter how much you try to compromise with them, it's never enough. It's either their way or no way at all. They'd never accept their own little corner of America. They want it all. Not only that, but they think that "God" or somebody "promised" it to them and them only to "rule" over as in the Book of Genesis."

And I think that NG and Anybody should donate an inch to me. Being 5'5" would be a world changer!

Anybody got an axe to grind? True intellectuals don’t push hate and segregation…they look for solutions.

FYI…I am not a true intellectual.

I don't see any ax grinding. At least they have the conviction of putting a name to their words.

What I hate is war and commercial gain from it. Monsanto is still making a fortune in Vietnam —-then Agent Orange, now Roundup.

Lot’s Wife and Anybody, I would love to hear your comments on Eisenhower’s “Military-Industrial Complex” speech in 1961.

I was eight years old when I heard it.