Why do we always have to have an enemy?

[ck4829]

We fight Islamic Terrorists today.

Yesterday, it was drug dealers.

And the day before that, if was Communists.

Why is this?

I've also noticed that the enemy has never been Far Right Terrorism. We've never detained White Supremacists or considered invading Elohim City (A commune for Neo-Nazis) after the Oklahoma City Bombing. We also didn't ship Eric Rudolph or Timothy McVeigh off to Syria to be tortured. Bush has never made any dramatic speeches and such congratulating the Counter-Terrorism efforts that have stopped the 19 potential terrorist attacks in the US that would have been perpetrated by RW'ers.

Why is this?

[RethugAssKicker]

1. An excuse to keep the Military Industrial Complex rolling

in dough!!!

[BR_Parkway]

2. How can you feel superior if there's no "them" to put down? We have

a national self esteem problem

[treestar]

5. Exactly.

This is why there are racists, too, and the anti-Muslim hatred is a boon to them. They hated blacks and hispanics, but the poor things were always taunted by the "politically correct." This new boogeyman doesn't seem to carry this burden, and they can hate him with abandon.

[Homer Wells]

30. The Right Wing fascists and terrorists

hate THEMSELVES but can't be honest enough with even themselves to admit that. Therefore, they project that hate on to other (THE OTHER) people, usually minorities, (since they are cowards at heart).

I recall an old sci-fi story from my youth where mankind had finally come together, but only because an alien sentient species had come to the world, allowing their individual racial hatreds to be re-focused on the new guys in town.

And so it goes......:shrug:

[HereSince1628]

3. We need "them" or we can't be "us"

This seems to be one of the flaws with the human need to divide into social units.

[shain from kane]

4. You know your Pink Floyd.

[The Stranger]

12. Please cite album and song title.

Thanks!

[shain from kane]

15. From the internets ---

Artist: Pink Floyd
Song: Us And Them
Album: Dark Side Of The Moon


Us and Them
And after all we're only ordinary men
Me, and you
God only knows it's not what we would choose to do
Forward he cried from the rear
and the front rank died
And the General sat, as the lines on the map
moved from side to side
Black and Blue
And who knows which is which and who is who
Up and Down
And in the end it's only round and round and round
Haven't you heard it's a battle of words
the poster bearer cried
Listen son, said the man with the gun
There's room for you inside
Down and Out
It can't be helped but there's a lot of it about
With, without
And who'll deny that's what the fightings all about
Get out of the way, it's a busy day
And I've got things on my mind
For want of the price of tea and a slice
The old man died

[theophilus]

6. It is much easier to make enemies than it is to make friends.

This country, to a great extent, is being run by lazy, hateful people.

[MaineYooper]

7. The classic magician's trick: misdirection.

If you're watching my hand wave up here, you miss the real action down below.

ergo

If the population is busy worrying about an external enemy out there, they'll be less worried about the troubles/inequities/etc in here.


(happy 400th post to me!)

[LiberalEsto]

8. It's easier to blame others for your problems

than to honestly face your own shortcomings.

[European Socialist]

9. To keep our mind off the shrinking economic pie the Repuke policies have brought.

[jwirr]

10. WE do not need an enemy but the Military Industrial Establishment

does. Can't sell weapons of mass destruction if you do not have an enemy.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

11. Mystics say

it is the small self or mind or ego that requires this-it confirms it's illusory existance. Check out Eckhardt Tolle's work for more on this.

[enlightenment]

13. Because of a process that philosophers call "Othering"

Here's a pretty good explanation:

"What appear to be cultural units—human beings, words, meanings, ideas, philosophical systems, social organizations—are maintained in their apparent unity only through an active process of exclusion, opposition, and hierarchization. Other phenomena or units must be represented as foreign or 'other' through representing a hierarchical dualism in which the unit is 'privileged' or favored, and the other is devalued in some way." Lawrence Cahoone (1996)

You might also read Orientalism by Edward Said. He was at the fore-front of post-colonial studies, and quite brilliant (if polemical). This book, written in 1978, captures the essence of "othering" pretty well!

Linda Colley's 1992 work, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837, takes the concept of othering to Britain to explain the development of nationhood. I don't agree with a lot of what she says in the book, but her use of "othering" is very clear and easy to understand.

[Rex]

14. Because the MIC can't make a buttload of money without an 'enemy'.

They learned this rule during the Cold War. For profits to continue to go up, there must be an enemy. Todays is the best so far - a shadowy, nebulous group of rogues that no one can pin down. I can smell the money and oil from here.

[The2ndWheel]

16. Doesn't everyone have an enemy?

Aren't the White Supremacists our enemy? Or corporate CEO's that ship jobs away? George W. Bush? Would politics exist if everyone didn't have at least one enemy to fight against?

[Tesha]

17. There always has to be "Goldstein" for a totalitarian empire...

There always has to be "Goldstein" for a totalitarian empire
to get its workers motivated about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Goldstein

Tesha

[davekriss]

18. Read Noam Chomsky

You could pick a book almost at random and you'd then understand the "why". However, I suspect that your question is rhetorical. ;)

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

19. H.L. Mencken said it best...

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H.L. Mencken

[maxsolomon]

20. distraction from the reality of class warfare

keeps the eye of the proletariat off the wealthy.

this is the reason politics is well-funded by capitalists. it buys them a low profile (the truly wealthy, not the content-provider celebrities), and makes them appear essential to the health of the state.

[Abuhans]

25. So let us unite against our enemy!

The rich!

[maxsolomon]

27. wilkommen zu DU

i can't unite with you against the rich because there's a .000001% chance that i might one day be rich.

acknowledging that class struggle exists doesn't mean i'm pol pot anymore than your sarcasm means you're bruce tinsley.

marx's analysis of capital is not invalidated by stalin's crimes.

[Abuhans]

32. Only a .000001% chance?

Oh I think Marxism requires a tremendous amount of violence to implement. What is to be done with all the people who will not share? Then again, that is disingenuous, all government requires a tremendous amount of violence to exist. Steal from everyone, kidnap those who don't cooperate, murder those who resist.

[maxsolomon]

36. enjoy your stay

i said analysis, not implementation

[underpants]

29. I was going to say "What are we supposed to do talk about the issues?"

but I think your point is more accurate.

[porphyrian]

21. The easiest way to unite a large, diverse population is against a common enemy.

Also, a population that fights amongst itself is not fighting those in power effectively.

[benEzra]

22. The Bogeyman effect...

As H.L. Mencken wryly noted, "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Pick your bogeyman--terrorists, drugs, alcohol, video games, protruding rifle handgrips, whatever. Incite a moral panic and manipulate the sheep into supporting whatever appropriation of power you want to support.

Which is absolutely and totally wrong, BTW, no matter who does it.

[Jade Fox]

23. Because many people require a Bad Guy......

to project all their negativity on, and feel superior to. Look how many freeper types seem exactly like the "terrorists" they supposedly despise. Lots of people have no positive sense of self if they don't have someone they can compare themselves favorably to.

[Beelzebud]

24. The sheep are easily controlled when they're afraid of something.

[BuyingThyme]

26. Cash.

[LSK]

28. Military Industrial Complex

[Sapere aude]

31. Every morning on 760 AM radio in San Diego, Rick Roberts has some reason why

the liberals, or Moslems or the ACLU is out to destroy our way of life. The rightwing, freeper, Christo-fascists eat that shit up.

[TahitiNut]

33. To clear the way for a colonoscopy?

Oh... I thought you said 'enema.' Nevermiiind. :silly:

[zreosumgame]

34. some have a need to always have an 'other' to blame

much easier to live in denial that way, even if it is 4 year old boys

[sweetheart]

35. They copied the nazi economic miracle

Our society is founded, like tha nazi one, on a permanent state of war and military supremacy.
It is not an accident. The industrialists long admired the nazis for their ideal efficient
solution to unemployment and imprisoning their undesirables for extermination or resettlment.

Unlike nazi germany, no ameircans have any excuses about those concentration camps outside of
town, with the millions from the drugs wars (the new american jews). The police/prison industry
consciously lobbies to increase the prisons populations, and the same jerkoffs lobby for more
war too... its their jobs, and they want more work.

That the moral decline is that complete, that the empire has become the worst of the soviet system
and the nazi one, is why there must be an 'enemy' as if there weren't, people would turn on the
real enemy and destroy the evil government.

[Swede]

37. Kinda like the eternal war between Oceana,Eurasia and East Asia from 1984.

Who's for some victory gin?

[shance]

38. As long as they keep us divided and isolated from each other, they stay in power.

Bada bing bada boom.

End of story.

That's why they have disinformation departments and infiltrators.

That is essentially what all the spying is about.

To divide, scapegoat and cripple.