from Bill Shireman "No One Wants To Talk About Their Idiots"
When any of us see threats to our well-being, we become afraid, and look for a cause or an enemy at which to direct our anger. It’s in our genes, and we’re better off because of it.
Because we evolved in tribes, for millions of years the enemy or cause was often someone or something outside the tribe. So we are quick to find “others” that everyone in the tribe can blame.
In today’s world, those instincts can be easily manipulated for political gain. It’s easy, for example, to slip a villain into that ready-made mental model. It’s easy to paint a whole category of outsiders as the enemy. We’re pre-programmed with the narrative, we just need to have the characters filled in.
Demagogues like Hannity, idiots like Beck, and paranoids like Savage either knowingly or ignorantly are happy to trigger us — to build their own power, wealth, egos, or all of the above.
As a result, the idiots — that’s all of us, remember — reinforce our wild fears and prejudices, and fail to learn to be smarter. It’s partly our fault: We should know better. But it’s also partly the fault of those in a position to manipulate us.
