A Theory of Mass Psychology/Politics

Or, why has hate become so popular?

A puzzled feminist mulls the feminist reaction to Sarah Palin, as though this differs from Bush Derangement Syndrome, from the vehemence of the response to the nomination of Robert Bork or the deluge of sewage poured upon John Tower when President Bush the First nominated him to the office of Secretary of Defense. Frustration with the progress of the Vietnam war leaked into public responses to the Johnson Presidency generally (remember MacBird! and the insinuations that President Kennedy's assassination was an inside job?), but President Johnson's critics usually limited their vehement disapproval to defence policy. So I wonder.

Since Reagan, Orwell's Five Minute Hate lasts years. Why? Emotions are drugs, a few milligrams of protein in the blood. Perhaps we all become addicted to some emotion and some of us find a mix of drugs (emotions) interesting. Why have so many become addicted to hate and why these targets?

Someone once wrote that not all religions need a God, but every religion needs a devil. Whose dogma requires that the public dance like marionettes, pulled by these emotional strings?

Here is my guess: (1) public sector union leaders, (2) insecure, lazy, narcissistic journalists, and (3) power-addicted politicians.

1) Because standard economic analysis would call into question the role of the State in the provision of education services (among other things), and because a realistic history of the US education industry would not flatter the institution of State (government, generally) schooling, History, Civics, and Economics teachers will, in general, present a contorted course of instruction.

While membership in private-sector unions has been shrinking, the public sector has been growing. Much more than dues revenue is at stake. The difference between free marketeers in office (Reagan, Palin) and socialists (Democrats, mainstream Republicans) in office is, to the leaders of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel, the difference between earning a living doing honest work and skimming the taxpayers $500billion+ K-12 revenue stream.

The politics of personal destruction is bare-knuckle unionization tactics.

2) Admit it: the kids who hung out in the yearbook/school newspaper room in high school were the socially adept fad followers with trendy clothes. Most jocks had more on the ball. The motorheads did, too. In college, things did not improve. What does this imply? Of course some journalists could have majored Physics instead but intellectual limitations make many journalists natural socialists. The government of a locality is the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in that locality (definition). Private property (title) and the Federal principle (States' Rights) institutionalize humility. "What works?" is an empirical question which only an experiment can answer. A centralized government or a State-monopoly enterprise is like an experiment with one treatment and no controls, a retarded experimental design. Socialism is an infantile power fantasy: "What a wonderful world it would be if I ran it". On this theory journalists do not love Barak Obama, they love themselves. People hate what they fear. Free marketeers threaten journalists' self-congratulatory power fantasies.

Further, despite its avowed skepticism the profession of journalism comes with a built-in respect for authority. Otherwise, why should anyone believe them? A journalist with no respect for authority might as well use randomly selected pedestrians as sources for stories on global climate change or nuclear waste storage as use Professors of Paleoclimatology or Nuclear Engineering. Furthermore, if the DOE Public Relations Office will write a reporter's stories and allow him to put his name to them, why would he bust his butt researching and writing three articles per week for $45,000? Ready-made authority, such as an academic title or institutional position, is just too convenient to disavow.

3) Unionized J-school faculty filter journalism students. Public-sector unions sustain a permanent campaign in support of growth in the public-sector workforce. These factors shape a politically effective constituency which will reliably supply socialist (D) power addicts with an electoral fix every two, four, or six years. You have read about some meth addict killing his grandmother because she would not let him pawn the TV. That's your average State legislator, Congressman, Senator, or Governor, selling children into bondage to the NEA and taxpayers into bondage to the Chinese (your national debt), for a power fix.

So journalists stoke the fires of hatred for free marketeers and federalists, and Socialist Studies teachers contort US History and Economics classes. Three generations of school kids since widespread public sector unionization and here we are. That's my theory, anyway.

Update. There's this from Instapundit.

Homeschool.
Kill your television.