Can think of one group - readers.
It Can't Happen Here described a basic Murican acculturation. (I may have mentioned this before.)
Those '60's fears were as sensible then as now, to anyone acquainted with a few of the millions of My Grammas (and especially anyone who remembers how easily McCarthy was able to setup his scam, "I hold in my hand the names of X Communists in the ___ Department"). That's all it took to A) Create and magnify the Fear. B) Consolidate his Power. Then leverage that precisely as did J. Edgar (and his dossiers).
Hoover managed to play Robespierre.. forever. McCarthy was more like Shrub, but a wet-drunk. Tee Vee + his innate hubris was his undoing. But 'twas inherent Vileness (as with Roy Cohn) that actually killed him: a mercy killing.
Then and now.
(We should be grateful for Shrub's complete conversion to Messiah-complex + the evidence all around - of not merely how far he would go: but Has Gone.)
And STILL! it remains iffy.
THAT is Who 'We' Are. Scaredy-kat consuming sheep, Owned-by our stuff and with burglar alarms on the Rolex to the Hummer. As mentioned in that other thread: I too associate the valuing of Property over People with your idealized "Confederates" -- you got your simile Backwards. Again.
Unity and self-sacrifice, of themselves, even when fostered by the most noble means, produce a facility for hating. Even when men league themselves mightily together to promote tolerance and peace on earth, they are likely to be violently intolerant toward those not of a like mind.
The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination.
Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet. The fanatics of various hues eye each other with suspicion and are ready to fly at each other's throat. But they are neighbors and almost of one family. They hate each other with the hatred of brothers.
The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to his reason and his moral sense. He fears compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and righteousness of his holy cause. But he finds no difficulty in swinging suddenly and wildly from one holy cause to another. He cannot be convinced but only converted. His passionate attachment is more vital than the quality of the cause to which he is attached.
\ufffd Eric Hoffer, The True Believer via Rand
"To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are."
Eric Hoffer via Owl!
