There are a lot of really scared people in this country right now. They are terrified of immigrants and women and homosexuals; they fear science, diversity, Hispanics, Natives, Blacks — or even worse — mixed race people like me. Most of all, they fear change.  They are worried that America will soon be unrecognizable, and they want to “take back the country.” They don’t like the fact that over half the population is non-white, and they are afraid that their religious freedom is somehow under threat.

Angry, embittered White people fear the inevitable. They are scared little children, grasping feebly at something that is already slipping away from them. They long for the good old days when minorities and women were in submissive roles, and the Bible was the immutable edict of morality. Fear drives the worst in human nature. Scared people lash out angrily and irrationally. They willfully do harm to others, thinking that the damage is justified, or that it is their place to teach others a ‘lesson.’ They rationalize horrific acts, believing them to be defensive. Eventually, they lose the capacity to see just how absurd their claims of victimization truly are.

More troubling is the fact that these people think they know what is best for everyone.

Most of us have been forced at some point to interact with prejudiced, spiteful people whose hostility towards other human beings raises serious doubts about our own humanity. In America, there has been an outpouring of malevolence towards others, based on all manner of bigotry. But bigotry alone cannot explain the desire of some Americans to increase the suffering of their fellow citizens.  Republicans typically support policies that favor wealthy donors and mega-corporations over human beings, but it would be a mistake to ascribe the growing hostility towards middle-America strictly to the GOP’s reverence for the undeserving, parasitic One Percent.

There is a deeply rooted malice among the GOP’s Ayn Rand-inspired neocons and their Christian Fundamentalist allies which is not based on economics, and it reinforces the notion that the Republican Party is made up of callous individuals, apparently driven by abject fear, ignorance and a loathing of people who aren’t exactly like them. They have tapped into this paradigm and promulgated it among their supporters for political expediency.

Americans are witnessing the culmination of years of extremist propaganda inciting fear of change and a profound hatred of their fellow citizens. Their minds have been poisoned by incessant fear-mongering and endless attacks on the “others”: those who represent a changing America. They prove it with every proposal to end Birthright citizenship; every attempt to obstruct the rights of women, gays and minorities; and every piece of draconian austerity legislation they try to pass.

Still, they could never attempt such inhumane measures if a large segment of the population did not share the same contempt for humanity. 

[Edited repost from 2015]