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Creating Monsters Is Not Hard To Do
Creating monsters is not difficult. In fact, most of us do it automatically. We don’t go out of our way seeking someone to blame for what’s messed up in our world, but we certainly do fall into line when someone else proposes easy blame.
Mexicans are all rapists and drug dealers.
Feminists want to dispose of all men.
Muslims want to kill us all, because they hate our freedom.
Christians hate gays, and born babies.
When Truth Gets in the way
None of these statements are true. But they are easy. They target well, hit their mark, and encourage a highly effective, coping mechanism of displaced blame. They also have the added benefit of making the speaker, and often their audience, feel that they are superior somehow.
It is the “Others” that are screwing everything up. It is the “Others” that we must police more heavily, suspect more readily, and single out for swift justice.
The problem with such blanket statements, of course, is that they sometimes hold one tiny fragment of truth. To say Mexicans are all criminals, for example, is wrong, even though surely some of them are criminals. However, the real falsehood is in what is not said: