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."

Helter Skelter 2.0

Fifty years ago, we recoiled in horror at the mesmeric abilities of a devious, two-bit con who'd concocted a fable about an impending civil war—a fable so powerful, it incited mass murder. 

The fabulist was named Charles Manson; his fable, "Helter Skelter." On the strength of the fable, a California judge condemned Manson to death, although he'd steered clear of the killings.

Another con is at large today. The fable he spins is as crazy as "Helter Skelter" and—to suggestible followers—just as compelling.

Will the law allow him to remain at large?

An Inauguration Memory

Memories keep the wolf of insignificance from the door. 

— Saul Bellow

A vivid personal memory: K Street on a bitter-cold January evening; a driving snowstorm dims the streetlights; no sounds but the wind and the murmuring pinkish sky; a column of long black limousines silently snakes by, bound for the White House or some nearby hotel. I was working late at a video studio, editing a show my client needed in the morning; I had stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. It was 1985.

Ronald Reagan's second inauguration was history's coldest. The temperature that morning was 4° below zero, the wind-chill, 20° below. Reagan delivered his speech inside the Capitol Rotunda, before an audience of Congressmen; no crowds gathered outside, for fear of getting frostbite. 

The parade down Pennsylvania Avenue was also cancelled, the president saying, "the health and safety of those attending and working at the event must come before any celebration;" but in truth it was Reagan's health and safety that were in jeopardy.

His advisors had reminded the 74-year-old Reagan—America's oldest president—of William Henry Harrison's 1841 inauguration. On that day, Harrison spent five hours standing on the Capitol steps in a freezing rain. The event left Harrison with a nasty head cold; and 30 days later, he died of pneumonia.

Reagan's inaugural committee had given away 140,000 tickets to the swearing-in and sold 25,000 tickets to the parade. None of them was used.

When asked by reporters at a photo shoot what would be different about his second term, Reagan replied, “Well, I hope it will be warmer.”

Beware the Devil's Bargain

What fools these mortals be.

— William Shakespeare

Five years ago, I spent three lovely winter weeks in Cape May, New Jersey, helping to care for my then-preschool-age granddaughter Lucy, while her dad was on an extended business trip.

Every morning while Lucy was in school, I'd grab a joe and a buttered bagel at a café near the county courthouse, and sit and read another front-page story in the local paper, The Press of Atlantic City, about the ruin wrought upon the region by a bankrupt casino developer named Donald Trump.

As story after story told, Trump had systematically cheated small-time building and hotel-service contractors throughout South Jersey, leaving them with nothing for their efforts but unpaid bills, insurmountable debts, and suicidal wishes.

Trump's biography as a businessman, we've since learned, is the tale of a consummate chiseler and all-time loser. Atlantic City was just one brief chapter of the tale.

The chiseler-in-chief has just added a fresh chapter to his biography, as he stiffs the fools who stormed the Capitol on his behalf.

Like those South Jersey contractors, they'll lose everything, while Donald remains safely ensconced on his golden throne.

Beware the devil's bargain!

UPDATE FEBRUARY 4, 2021: Trump is so despised in Atlantic City, the mayor successfully auctioned off ringside seats for the implosion of his abandoned casino later this month.

Comeuppance

An epoch is but a swing of the pendulum.

— George Bernard Shaw

That momentous sound you hear is history's escapement as the pendulum swings back toward economic justice. I didn't think I'd live long enough to hear it. I'm glad I did.

Ninety years ago, the GOP—the party of the rich—handed FDR an economy in ruins. But by restraining the rich, FDR turned that economy around, rebuilding it on the basis of the New Deal and the nation's mobilization against fascism.

The New Deal epoch endured through seven more administrations—those of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter—until Reagan reversed the pendulum. 

Reagan and the GOP ultimately ruined the economy again, in the process awarding trillions of dollars to one of every ten Americans, while driving two of every ten into poverty. 

It took five more administrations—those of Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump—to end Reagan's epoch; but, clearly, it's over. Trump made that certain.

Americans need good government—and to again deal the rich their comeuppance.