Who Are You Going To Hate Next?

The 2001 film Conspiracy has stuck with me for nearly two decades. It's based on the Wannsee Conference where the Nazis developed what became known as The Final Solution. The script is taken from the only surviving transcript of the meeting.

The film contains two elements that haunt me. First, the meeting is conducted in a matter-of-fact manner with a working lunch. The arguments are never about whether genocide should occur but how to most efficiently implement it.

Second, Kenneth Branagh who plays Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi who conducted the meeting, retells a story designed as a warning. 

The story's moral is that hate should not become so all consuming  so that when the object of hate is gone one has nothing left to live for.

The story is becoming more salient in 2020 as I foolishly read the comment threads on various blog posts or Twitter threads. Anyone to the political left of Joseph McCarthy is a communist who threatens to destroy the American Republic and anyone to the political right of Angela Davis is fascist who threatens to destroy American Democracy.

Politics has gone far beyond the "tastes great/less filling" type of debate. In fact, the political vitriol has become closer to the religious hatred satirized in Gulliver's Travels where arguments over whether whistling being a vice or a virtue could lead to war. In short, for some, political opponents are now someone to hate.

I don't know how widespread the hatred is or how deeply it has set in. I'm certain, however, that once hatred becomes entrenched as part of a pseudo-religious doctrine, there will always be a new target to hate. If that entrenchment occurs, we may all look back at 2020 with nostalgia.

Repeat After Me: Political Cults Of Personality Are Bad

Donald Trump ascended to the presidency and shut down the government because he has a cult like following. He demonstrated his understanding of this fact when he said, "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters." Like all cults, the Trump Cult has a talisman, the MAGA cap.

Any Republican readers who stop by will undoubtedly mutter to themselves "what about Kennedy or the Clintons or Obama." Please read the post's title.

Kamala Harris declared herself a candidate for president on Monday.Today, The Hill reports that Harris will be getting her own action figure because at least one person believes she's a step ahead of us mere mortals:

“Think of the impact California has had on our culture,” FCTRY CEO Jason Feinberg said in a statement about the company’s Harris doll. “Same-sex marriage. Computers, of course. Movies. Even small things like avocado toast! As a proud New Yorker, it’s a little hard to admit this, but California always figures things out a bit before the rest of us.” 

“Right now it’s hard to look at Kamala Harris and not get that same sense,” Feinberg said.

I have nothing against action figures. I own a William Shakespeare action figure, several Wonder Woman action figures, an Albert Einstein action figure, a Xena, Warrior Princess action figure, and a Doug Mientkiewicz bobblehead. I also live in a rudderless country presided over by a megalomaniac who claimed that he "alone [could] fix it."

I also have nothing against Harris. She announced her candidacy a few days ago and has not demonstrated any of Trump's megalomania. That said, the past few years have once again shown it's best to not underestimate the idiocy of fervent people overly invested in a single person. It would be far better to replace the Trump cult with a boring, competent president rather than a person venerated by a different cult.

Excuse me while I go look for my Sigmund Freud and Annie Oakley action figures. I want to make sure the packages are in mint condition.