Hate Lives On

Demagogy is a good word. It means, "impassioned appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the populace."

The Rightwing uses a lot of demagogy. Their voter base likes it. Responding emotionally is a lot easier than thinking. Name-calling is easier than reasoned discussion. Resistance is easier than change.

The Bush Administration's hypocritical homophobia will have consequences.

Consider the Civil Rights movement, (although I know some people object to that parallel). The more inevitable it became that equality under the law was imminent, the more hatemongering the racists did. They thumped pulpits and passed out leaflets and gave hysterical interviews about how we needed to be trembling in our shoes and reaching for our guns because The Negroes were a comin' and society was going to go down in flames.

The hatemongers naturally failed to stop human progress but the lies they told are still echoing down the years. The more resisters whip up public paranoia over the soon-to-be-integrated population, the more decades it takes for true integration to happen. The reactionaries teach ignorant people to hate and fear, and those aren't emotions that evaporate just because a bill is passed.

The bigots scream that "they" are going to take your jobs, your homes, your children, and your schools. And every time some nitwit doesn't get the job he wants, the house he thinks he deserves, his kids get in trouble, or he can't give them the education he wanted, he already has a scapegoat handy. (It's much easier to have a "them" to blame than it is to take personal responsibility, so weak people always like to have a "them" handy.)

It's irresponsible and socially destructive to make homophobia the centerpiece of their "social" program the way the Bush Administration is doing, but it's not unprecedented.