Humiliation

You mustn't humiliate the opposition. 
No one is more dangerous than one who is humiliated.

— Nelson Mandela

Humiliate is a 16th century word borrowed from the Latin humiliare‎, meaning "to abase." Humiliare, in turn, came from humus, meaning "dirt."

When hate flairs, we love to shame each other, to grind each other into the dirt.

In England in the 1660s, journalists who offended any gentleman would be publicly shamed in the coffeehouses and doused with boiling-hot coffee.

In Germany in the 1930s, Nazis would force Jews to kneel on the sidewalks and scrub anti-Nazi graffiti off storefronts, to the merriment of the goyish passersby.

In France in the 1940s, women who'd had sex with German soldiers during the occupation had their heads shaved in public, before being paraded through their home towns and villages.

In America in the 1950s, Blacks were regularly barred from entering restaurants, stores, and hotels. Attempting to do so risked public threats, insults, and beatings.

On social media right now, anyone who voices support for Joe Biden is hounded by "trolls," whose favorite tactics are to name-call and conspire to get the poster "cancelled" by the platform. (It happens to me routinely.)

Conservatives love to weaponize humiliation. While they'd deny that browbeating their opponents is a source of sadistic pleasure, their proud pronouncements say otherwise; for example (this statement from a proponent of caning children):

"Once we realize that a world of only positive reinforcements is wondrous but not within human reach, we must reluctantly turn to disincentives, sanctions, and other forms of punishment."

To understand why conservatives relish humiliation would require a battalion of psychoanalysts. Freud believed we all shared memories of prehistoric cannibalism that, under the sway of the "death instinct," we channel in the modern era into aggression.

I'm content simply to say conservatives as a lot are sick puppies.

As a political weapon, humiliation works only when its target has the temerity to think he, she or they is better than dirt. 

But self-worth among groundlings is a virtue conservatives despise, and so turn their hatred into efforts to humiliate their opponents—to grind them back into the dirt from whence they came.

Although it's hard, I for one hope to refrain from humiliating outspoken conservatives in the future, because it's the humane course of action. 

As Biden said yesterday, "We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal. We can do this if we show a little tolerance and humility."

But I also hope to refrain from using humiliation as as weapon because it's prudent.

For as Mandela warned, "No one is more dangerous than one who is humiliated."