How to Feed the Power Hungry

Cartoon from the records of the National Child Labor Committee (U.S.). During the Progressive Era many organizations were formed to outlaw the child labor that was a feature of Gilded Age industrial revolution, which included teenage girls working long hours in mills. The cartoon shows a child laborer supporting the world with her labor, including an uncaring robber baron industrialist.
Image is in the public domain.

There are two easy ways to feed the voracious power-wielding groups in this country, those contemporary robber barons who gobble up the sustenance, the lives, the well-being of millions of people and the planet on which they struggle to survive:

1) Succumb to their lies, their distortions, their fear-mongering, their racism, their endless worship of capitalism, and their militarization of everything; how succumb? by voting for them;

and

2) Don’t vote. Stay home. Tell yourself, the world is an unholy mess. Your vote won’t matter. There is no difference between political parties. That’ll get them. Not.

This is a big year. Another Presidential election, Congressional elections, other elections, and if you’re a US citizen 18 or over, you have the right to vote. There may be no right more important than that one. Thousands of people were locked up, beaten, and murdered so that you and your compatriots would have that right.

From small communities to the nation as a whole, countless decisions are decided by votes. Congress votes to preserve or destroy forests, wildlife, the atmosphere.

The President votes by approving or vetoing Congressional votes.

Community level governments decide whether or not to put more money into education, recreation, local social services based on voter behavior.

It’s not too late to make a new year’s resolution and this one won’t involve giving up things you like.

Vote.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Dehumanizing or demonizing the other (Moral disengagement, part 7)

Photo of antisemitic Nazi propaganda
Antisemitic Nazi Propaganda. (Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license. From WikiMedia Commons)

Dehumanizing or demonizing the other is a particularly common form of moral disengagement, especially during wartime or other types of conflict.

Another moral disengagement mechanism described by psychologist Albert Bandura, it refers to portraying your enemy as less than human, as some sort of vile creature.

During World War II, all factions in the conflict created posters of the enemy as a subhuman monster. In addition, propaganda and feature films of that era–as well as during the Cold War and the Vietnam War–stereotyped, sub-humanized, dehumanized, and demonized the enemy.

Consider this quote: “…[This nation is] aiming at the exclusive domination of the [world], lost in corruption, [characterized by] deep-rooted hatred towards us, hostile to liberty wherever it endeavors to show its head, and the eternal disturber of the peace of the world.”

Who do you think said that? To what nation was he referring?

The answer to the first question is Thomas Jefferson, in 1815, when he was President. The nation in question was Great Britain. Imagine what might have happened if weapons of mass destruction were available back then. Suppose Jefferson, as President, pushed Congress for a preemptive strike against Great Britain. Would a more peaceful world have been achieved?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Note: This post was adapted from my previously published article in Peace Psychology (a publication of the American Psychological Association), Spring, 2009.