OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: The Toxic Stench of Hateful Lies

And thanks to their reaching these shores, I have been privileged to
grow up playing sandlot ball and being one of the guys in this great
melting pot of American society.

But my ancestral experience has sensitized me to the stench given off
by the hateful spirit. And I'm alarmed these days at how this
stench is rising in our country.

The news has been full of hateful lies of this kind.

** Obama is a Muslim, the word went out last fall, trying to exploit
the way our recent national experience has associated "Muslim" with
"threat."A lie to help stoke people's fears, knowing that fear is the
best way to divide people, and dividing is the best way to conquer.

**Obama's going to take away our guns a story, with no evidence to
support it, to scare people about something is central for many people
to their feelings of security. Fear this man, the subtext goes: he's
not your president, he's a threat.

** Obama wasn't born in America, he's an alien, and he can't be our
president. So claims against all evidence the "birther movement,"
sowing fear and resentment as if this man who looks different from
previous presidents is a usurper, not legitimately deserving of the
office he won.These forces will SAY ANYTHING, encourage any falsehood,
however absurd, to prevent the bridge-builder who beat them at the
polls from bringing different groups of Americans together.

** Obama's health care plan contains provisions to kill off our elderly
again, a complete fabrication, with no basis whatsoever in reality
sowing fear that behind his agenda lies murderous intent.

Another lie, and again, the lie is to foment fear. It's all about
making people afraid so that they will oppose even changes that would
make their own lives more secure by ending the fleecing of Americans by
the present system.

Never in my lifetime have I seen such utter dishonesty operating so
pervasively at the center of our political life. So many lies, and all
of them it seems are fashioned to foster fear and hatred.It alarms me.

Never in my lifetime have I seen lies capturing the minds of such a
substantial part of our populace. The lies about the guns led to a
four- or five-fold increase in the sales of guns and ammunition. And
less than half of all Republicans, nationwide, tell pollsters that they
believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States. Among
the whites in the South, the percentage who doubt that Obama was born
in the U.S., and therefore can legally serve as president, is more than
70 percent.

Where will the sowing of such fears and suspicions take this country?

No, I don't imagine we have pogroms in our future. For one thing,
the present crop of lies is aimed not at defenseless minorities but at
someone, who's from a previously oppressed group, who now holds power.

But one never knows just how the spirit of hateful lies will leave its
imprint as history unfolds. (That Russian forgery, THE PROTOCOLS, I
mentioned above did some damage back in the time of the pogroms. But
who could have imagined how much those lies would later be a powerful
tool for the Nazis in their campaign, nearly forty years later, to
exterminate millions.)

Whatever its target today, the pattern of hatred --of Us vs. Them
thinking-- and the pattern of lies and manipulation can only be
dangerous for us as a society to give a home to. The pattern of
lying about the Other, and trying to destroy the Other, persists even
as the targets may change.

Human history should teach us this: the spirit of hateful lies is our
enemy, a curse for ALL of us, not just for their immediate targets. And
we should fight against that spirit always, whenever we see it at work.

Look for the tell-tale signs. Does it foster fear and hate? Does it
divide people? Does it speak to people's worst sides? Does it require
that people have to stay away from objective, responsible sources of
information for them to believe it?

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