MAKING VICTIMS, DESTROYING SOULS

 My New Found Victimhood

Recently I received an email from the university from which I retired and where I still mentor and teach students.  The email was seeking to “gather a list of First Gen faculty” who could be called upon to mentor “First Gen” students.

Being unfamiliar with the term “First Gen”, I did some research and learned that the U.S. Dept. of Education defines a First Gen or First Generation student as:

An individual, neither of whose parents completed a baccalaureate degree;

or

An individual who, prior to the age of 18, regularly resided with and received support from only one parent and whose supporting parent did not complete a baccalaureate degree.

or

An individual who, prior to the age of 18, did not regularly reside with or receive support from a natural or adoptive parent.

If your parent(s) and/or guardian(s) attended college but do not have a bachelor’s degree (i.e., did not graduate), you are considered to be first-generation.

This is the basic definition used by most colleges and universities, although some further explain that it does not matter about your siblings or any other family members.  That is, one only looks to the parent to determine if someone is First Gen.  Additionally, some schools expand their definition to include individuals whose parents, while having a degree, received that degree from an institution outside the United States.  The Dept. of Education tends to group its discussions of First Generation students with low income or otherwise disadvantaged students.

Think about this.  You could have highly successful parents who, for whatever reason, do not have a college degree, you might be a graduate of an outstanding prep school, have older siblings who are students or graduates of the finest colleges in the country and yet still qualify as a First Gen student and thus be qualified to receive whatever special benefits your college chooses to provide.

When I went to college, I did not consider myself disadvantaged.  I had parents who, though lacking college degrees, were well educated and encouraged education.  I went to good public schools with a high rate of graduates attending college.  My older siblings went to college before me.  Yet, lo and behold, I now discover that I had the disadvantage of being able to label myself as a First Generation student.  Wow.  I too can be a victim.  Actually, I found this thought quite offensive.

Realizing how ridiculous this is, I replied to the email and related my discovery that I am a First Gen.  I further explained that nonetheless, I would not be volunteering for the First Gen mentorship program.  Specifically, I stated, “In my humble opinion, such labels hurt rather than help individual initiative and success.  Obviously, I will not be volunteering as a First Gen mentor though, as you are well aware, I am always ready to help our students as individuals, regardless of whatever label our Woke world might want to place on them.”

I expected to get no response or simply a “thank you for your input” email.  But what I got was an email the total substance of which read “Was that really necessary?” to which I responded with one word:  Yes.   This interchange is not really relevant to the point of this essay, but it does serve to point out that those who are onboard with the Woke practice of labeling and creating political victimhoods are not inclined to want to have a discussion with someone of differing views; indeed, they don’t even want those views to be voiced.

Creating One’s Victimhood “narrative”

On the same day that the above took place I read an article revealing that Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy has fabricated his story of growing up poor, then becoming a successful entrepreneur.  He tells the story that he “didn’t grow up in money” and yet was able to create multimillion dollar companies out of nothing.  It turns out, however, that his parents both held graduate degrees and were highly successful professionals.  Vivek went to an elite prep school and had his own stock portfolio created for him by his parents that was “bringing in hundreds of dollars in dividends before he graduated high school and thousands by the time he attended Harvard, according to his 2002-2004 tax returns.”  Moreover, he accepted a scholarship “he previously said he needed in order to pay for law school.” The year he accepted a $90,000 award for law school, “Ramaswamy reported $2,252,209 in total income, according to his tax returns. He reported a total of $1,173,690 in income in the three years prior.”  You can read the full article here:  Vivek’s Background 

Why would someone as successful and seemingly intelligent as Vivek Ramaswamy create this false rags-to-riches narrative?  Why would he or anyone think that in order to be truly successful, to be “approved” by our culture that they need to first be a victim?  Why would anyone choosing to go into the public arena think that his deceptions would not be found out?  And, on a moral level, why would someone choose to deny who his parents really were and the positive help that they provided as they supported their son in his educational and career journey?  Is that not a slap in the face to his family?

The Consequences of Victim Labeling

Our Woke culture, our world of identity groups/politics, demands that we all be either victim or victimizer.  (I have fun wondering how my new-found victim status due to being a defined First Gen fits with my defined – due to my being White - status as victimizer.  Perhaps I should fall into some schizophrenic fugue.)

But seriously, we are all more than one label.  Each of us is an individual, not a two-dimensional cardboard cutout that can be labeled and then either applauded, condemned, or ignored.  We are all multi-dimensional and those dimensions include both positives and negatives, but all are uniquely ours.  They are what make us the INDIVIDUALS that we are.

If we are nothing more than the labels that some group has decided to place upon us then we lose our individual identity.  Not only who we are, but whom we may become is predetermined for us by someone else who may or more likely may not have our individual best interests in mind. 

If all we can be is what the label says we are, then why have any initiative?  And personal responsibility becomes meaningless because our actions are simply the result of our label.  If we are a victim, then we have our victimhood to blame for anything that goes wrong in our life.  After a fall we need not go through any self-examination or attempt to learn lessons for the future; we need not pull ourselves back up and try to do better or improve things for next time.  Rather, we can simply blame our victimhood and those labeled as our victimizers. 

Labeling is nothing more than a way to control us. People have always to some extent labeled others, and probably always will.  But today we have a political power movement that uses Wokeness to label and divide us and as a result take power over us.   You fit this label so you belong in this box.  No need to try to get out – to improve yourself or to go after your individual vision.  We have decided that this is you and therefore this is whom and what you will be.   And too many simply accept such labeling (or mislabeling) without question or, worse yet, seek it out.

Candidate Ramaswamy fell for the Woke labeling and believed that in order to be “successful candidate” he needed to have an appropriate backstory.  He chose the “rags to riches” narrative.  He became something he is not but that which fits within a particular label.  I chose to question my new label and was chastised for such questioning. 

Sadly, labels, and their subsequent import of victim or victimizer, are a part of our culture today.  We seek out and apply labels to both ourselves and others, and in so doing we diminish our humanity.  Accepting societal labeling grants power over us to those who create the labels and apply them.

The question is, are we playing victim, or is the need for victimhood playing us?  Because in the end, we are nothing but our own victimizers if the need to label, to be a victim, destroys us.  As Sophocles wrote in Antigone, "Who is the Slayer? Who is the Victim? Speak."

We need to answer this question for us, for today, for our civilization and our lives.  But we cannot truly answer it without shedding our need for labels, taking back the power over our being that we have granted to others, and becoming each our own unique individual.

Turns Out, I Wasn’t Buying It Even Then

In my last post I included Solzhenitsyn’s criticisms of the idea of situation ethics or relative morality.  When writing that post I was put in mind of my having read Joeseph Fletcher’s book “Situation Ethics: The New Morality” for a sociology class.  That would have been in the late 60s (the copyright date is 1966).  My memories were that I was swayed by the arguments in that book to look at my views of morality differently.  Turns out I actually still have my original copy (price on cover: $1.95) with my notes from the time.

My notes throughout the book reveal that I seem to have open mindedly considered as well as questioned the arguments and theses of the book, but that in the end I wasn’t sold.  Indeed, I seem to have at least intuited the criticisms spoken by Solzhenitsyn 5 or 10 years later.  The inside cover includes my handwritten comment that reads as follows:

whole book, & idea appears as just a way of rationalizing your sins, and “is trying to get out of it.”

makes us all out to be gods, who can choose to take a life for example, but we aren’t and we can’t.

Seems very slanted.  Only uses a very few Biblical examples over and over.

I don’t recall myself as being that perceptive.  But maybe it takes one looking back with later experience and history to see what one actually knew in the past.  The fact that my memory was that I had a fairly positive and transformative reaction to the book when I studied it is telling as to how the book and this new philosophy of relativism must have taken hold within our culture. 

Now, looking back with what I know and what I see around me today, I find the book truly frightening.  I see how right Solzhenitsyn was when he noted that the Communist ideology of relative (or class and identity) morality was a successful tool in its (and today’s Leftist Progressive ideology) anti-humanity crusade to gain power only for itself and gain the ability to fully manipulate the rest of us.

THE LURE OF SITUATIONAL MORALITY

The back of my copy of Situation Ethics touts it as “a manifesto of individual freedom and individual responsibility, elaborated within an ethic of love, which extricates modern man from rigid, archaic rules and codes.”

That was the 60s.  Think how enlightened that sounded.  “Individual freedom and individual responsibility”: isn’t that what people of the 60s were discovering – their ability to be themselves, to not conform and be like everyone else?  “Elaborated within an ethic of love”:  love one another was a sound and phrase of the times, how could that be bad?  And with these positive slogans we will “extricate modern man from rigid, archaic rules and codes”:  those would be the absolutes, the good and evil that served us well since civilized time began, the absolutes whose removal, Solzhenitsyn notes, leave us with nothing but the manipulation of one by another.

On page 56 of the book one finds a summary of the six propositions on which its philosophy of situation ethics rests: “The first one pins down the nature of value.  The second reduces all values to love.   The third equates love and justice.  The fourth frees love from sentimentality.  The fifth states the relation between means and ends.  The sixth authenticates every decision within its own content.” 

According to the author, “The new morality, situation ethics, declares that anything and everything is right or wrong, according to the situation.”  The author declares this new morality is not new, but is Bible-based and, like so many false prophets before and after him, he takes selected quotes from the Bible out of context to justify his philosophy that essentially comes down to:  do what feels good for you – if it feels good, it’s OK.

WHERE DID IT LEAD US

I think that in the 60s most who considered it didn’t notice the possible consequences of what embracing situational or relative morality might mean.  It is, I believe, a part of the lives of most of us today, and the Left has fully embraced it.

I think most everyone today will ignore otherwise rigid rules in at least some situations.  And probably people have always done this to some extent (is there anyone who has never told “a little white lie”?). 

But when there are absolute rules of right and wrong, good and evil, the breaking of these rules is less prevalent and is accompanied by some sort of guilt and understanding of one’s own wrongdoing.  When those “rigid” rules are gone one is ultimately left to do whatever one wants, regardless of what may be right or wrong for others.

Today, beyond more prevalent acceptance of excusing rule breaking in some circumstances, there are those who seem to believe that there really are no rules – they truly believe that a situation itself is the governing body in all circumstances. 

How else would we find people justifying theft and robbery (because they are just taking what they need), justifying the killing of police (because they are allegedly systemically racist), justifying violent riots called protests when they claim to serve a popular cause, even when they hurt or kill innocent bystanders, businesses, and government buildings (BLM riots after Floyd killing) but demanding severe punishment, even death to those whose protests violated the perimeter of the Capital building for a cause out of favor with the Left?

How else would we find people justifying the silencing of opposing viewpoints that they find uncomfortable, the disinviting of conservative speakers to college campuses because their views are offensive to Left-leaning students and faculty, the justification of harassing, namecalling, and sometimes physically attacking individuals who speak out in opposition to Leftist causes (most recently those who oppose CRT)? 

How else would we find the entertainment business and the elite and progressive individuals who profit from it justifying a daily diet of “entertainment” that sexualizes women and children while then acting as if they are horrified when someone whose politics are contrary to theirs commits even the slightest “MeToo” violation?

How else would we find the Left asserting its support for women’s rights and equal opportunity, then undermining those assertions when a biological male wants to compete as a female?   

How else would we find people believing that they can claim to be a devout follower of Catholicism yet be pro-abortion (a mortal sin in that faith) and demand they still be allowed to participate in the holy eucharist which requires adherence to the Catholic liturgy?

How else would we have a President requesting that social media censor and ban any posting that does not speak the truth, yet giving no criteria for what is “truth” or who will decide if a posting meets it, resulting, for example, in the idea that any suggestion that the Wuhan Virus came from the Wuhan lab should have been banned as untruthful, even though that now is the prevalent scientific theory?  How can science and humanity progress if no one is allowed to question or to present alternate ideas and theories?

THE RESULT OF EMBRACING RELATIVE MORALITY IS NOT PRETTY AND IT IS ANTI-HUMANITY

The above list could go on and on.  It includes just some of the examples of situation ethics in action that immediately come to mind.  I am sure every reader of this blog can think of many others.

We are destroying ourselves while believing that we have raised ourselves to some higher level of love.  Self-love seems to be the guiding principle – open any lifestyle magazine, any Sunday supplement, any self-help blog, any TV morning-show type supplement and you will hear about the importance of “self-care.”    That is where situational morality has taken us – to place the self as a god and the center of one’s universe. 

That’s fine if you live alone on some mountain top, but when two or more people come together who believe the situation and their feelings govern all even to the extent of justifying murder of the other, someone is going to have to determine whose self-love is superior. 

Once people have been manipulated into giving up absolute moral values, they need someone in power to decide what is OK in this or that situation.  That is where the progressive Leftist philosophy comes in.  They believe they can and should decide for each and every one of us, not because they know or care what is best, but because their philosophy requires and entitles them to do so.  They will take away humanity and replace it with manipulation and indifference.  As Solzhenitsyn so aptly noted, their goal is to destroy our social order.  The back cover of the Situation Ethics book essentially admits that as its intent.

My 1960s notes on Situation Ethics were more accurate than I understood at the time. I didn’t buy into it then, even though I thought I had.  Perhaps you didn’t buy into Situation Ethics either when you were first introduced.  But when there is what Solzhenitsyn calls a “constant dinning” and what we would today call propaganda with a daily barrage of one viewpoint taught from almost birth, it is easy to lose what one knows to be true and to buy into what we inherently know to be a mistake.   

We are not gods and relative morality, no matter how honorable and humane and even holy it may sound, is nothing more than a way to destroy the human essence and individuality and replace it with an ugly and oppressive power wielded by an elite and selfish few.  Each one of us who has let this destructive situation ethics into our lives needs to exorcise it immediately.

The Power Hungry Are Never Satisfied

I want to begin by recommending the well written and highly thought-provoking article by Mark T. Mitchell entitled The Death of God and the Death of Higher Education. LINK HERE 

I want to use one paragraph from that article as the jumping off point here.  That paragraph reads:

This quest for power is the characteristic feature of modern “higher” education. Students are taught that the world is divided into various groups whose primary identity is reducible to power differentials. A common pursuit of truth is replaced by overt and covert power struggles. In this new and barren world of power, the pursuit of the good, true, and beautiful is replaced by grievance and accusation. Concerted efforts to locate and correct injustice (a concept derived from a theistic account of the world) have been replaced by sweeping claims of “systemic” injustice, in which the entire civilizational edifice must be destroyed in the name of justice. But justice torn from its theistic grounding is merely a blunt instrument of power disguised in the moral language of a rejected world. Such a notion represents a self-refuting enterprise that will usher in not justice but unrestrained power cloaked in the God-haunted language of equality, social justice, and anti-racism.

I find this to so clearly encapsulate the social culture in which we are living today.  Everywhere one turns it seems to be all about power, with those in charge disguising their hunger for power as some sort of humanitarian and social justice that must be complied with to avoid showing yourself as some sort of anti-humanitarian who must be cancelled from the approved culture.

               Ramping-up Hatred

What are identity groupings about other than to create one group that holds power over another?  Rather than see all humans as one’s brother, identity politics teaches one that they are either a member of a victim group or of an oppressor group.  The oppressors are accused of working to maintain their own power and are encouraged to apologize for and relinquish it, while the victim groups are led to hate and attack their perceived oppressors in an attempt to obtain more power for their own group and then to wield that power over other groups whom they are taught to hate.

The President, who ran on the promise that he would unite us as one, has instead ramped up the identity hatred.  Now we have government programs that specifically exclude one race from their benefits, simply because of that race.  When we did similar things to Blacks a century ago, this country worked in a bipartisan fashion to correct that and treat all people as equals, regardless of race.  But now that those in power can benefit and retain their power by pushing identity hatred, they argue that the same sort of discrimination is OK because they have deemed the White race, against whom these new laws discriminate, to be members of an offensive identity group solely because of their race. That is racism pure and simple, a hatred created to benefit not the oppressed, but those currently in power.

Democrats claim that this discrimination is humanitarian and equitable.  It is anything but.  It is not humanitarian or just, but simply an ugly power grab based on hate.

               Silencing Voices and Facts

Those in power (including government, big tech, and corporate America) can tighten their grip on power if they silence opposing voices.  So we have cancel culture in full force, not based on facts, not based on equity or fairness, not based on humanitarian ideals, but simply on exercising and retaining power.

Consider the Georgia voting law.  It actually increases opportunities to vote, especially for rural and minority voters in that state.  Despite it being the very opposite of Jim Crow, President Biden, most Democrats, most of the mainstream media, many corporations are calling it just that.  Their claims are lies. 

Anyone who does even a cursory reading of the Georgia law will see that, contrary to our President's assertion, the new Georgia voting law does not prohibit giving water to voters waiting in line; rather it requires that poll workers be the ones to distribute it.  It also requires all 159 counties to have at least one vote drop box for mail in ballots.   It expands early voting access for most counties. It does require verification of identity for those requesting and returning mail in ballots which does not deny authorized voters the right to vote but does insure the integrity of their vote.  This is all a far cry from the Jim Crow label that the Democrats including the President and many in the media have placed on it.

But facts do not matter to those who are governed by their own quest for power.  The lies about the Georgia law have been exposed.  Nonetheless, led by the lies of the President and his urging, MLB has pulled the All-Star game from Atlanta.  That of course will hurt the largely Black population there, so the lie-based grab for power is hardly done in the name of standing for minorities or humanitarian efforts in their behalf.  It is simply a show of power and a punishment for passing a law that requires more standards of election integrity than would benefit those seeking to retain and strengthen their power.

The power hungry do not care about facts or about the consistency of their own values.  When it was convenient to attack the Trump administration the Democrats and their cohorts the mainstream media, big tech, big corporations, were all about decrying deplorable conditions at the border.  Now, when the border crisis is over 100% worse than it ever was under Trump (or any other president) these same people don’t even notice.  Trump was bad.  Biden was good.  Only facts supporting that narrative will be acknowledged.

               Powerful Join Forces Against Individual Rights

There is a frightening coalescence of government with private sector as both seek to cement their hold on power.  For example, President Biden cannot Constitutionally require “Vaccine passports” for internal movement of our citizenry.  But rather than stand for the Constitution and its protections for the people, he instead is urging big business to create such requirements, something that they can and likely will do.  They can withstand those who oppose such curtailment of our rights, and the President and the rest of the Democrats can deny responsibility but retain power.

Similarly, corporations make statements, cancel or refuse to sell certain products including books, make hiring decisions, censor, and take other actions based on the pronouncements of the “woke” Left.  Their actions, many of which would be unconstitutional if done by a governmental entity, are allowed because they are not the government.  Yet their actions are supportive of and fully in sync with those holding office and seeking to keep it and the power that goes with it.

               Equity Is Not Equality

Equity and fairness are not equality.  It is the equality, the extent to which it exists in this country as well as this country’s continued aspiration to ever improve its existence for all, that makes this country what it is.  Being equal, having equal opportunity, does not mean that results will be equal.  It does not mean that life will be fair.  But it does mean that everyone will have a fair shot at being the best they can be.

Equality does not divide people into identity groups, some of whom are given more equality than others.  Today this is being done in the name of things like “systemic racism” or similar perceived systemic injustices.  I have yet to be convinced that such systemic injustice exists, but if it does, it will not be cured by creating new systemic injustices.

               It’s Really All About Power, Not Humanitarian Ideals

I also have yet to be convinced that this president and his progressive administration really give a damn about any of the causes they claim to be pursuing for humanitarian or social justice reasons.  This is the party that created a minority underclass in our cities, dependent on, and therefore voters for, Democrat power. 

This is the party that is creating dangerous and inhumane conditions at our southern border while claiming that opening the borders is somehow humane.  Tell that to the trafficked children, to the Americans who are being displaced from jobs and homes and other due to the influx of illegal migrants that cities and towns simply cannot handle. 

Tell that to the taxpayers and to the next generations of taxpayers who cannot pay for these inhumane policies.  Just as they cannot pay for the trillions of dollars in spending that is supposedly for the good of the populace but in actuality simply furthers the power goals of the progressives.

It is not humanitarian to deny human individuality.  That is what cancelling those who disagree does.  That is what perpetuating lies does.  That is what identity politics does.  And that is what we are teaching our children to do:  deny human individuality, indeed make those who do not somehow benefit you and your power into inhuman caricatures and place them in a group that you can then justify as worthy of inhuman treatment. 

Power is a heady thing, and those who hold it right now seem to be willing to do anything to keep it.

 

Anger and Hate are NOT the Voice of America

The Democrats are consumed by anger and hate.  Anger seems to be all they know; hate is all they can do. 

This became fully apparent following the 2016 election when they did not get the prize to which they thought they were entitled, but their hatred was there before.  Hillary was not the first to disparage those who she and other Democrats felt were somehow beneath them. Beyond her basket of deplorables we can remember Obama and his supporters dismissing middle American values as if they were something left over from the dark ages.

But, once Donald Trump was elected President, the Democrats’ anger and hatred have become overwhelming.  The Democrats are unable to understand even the possibility that the people could elect someone other than them when they are so confident that they are smarter and better than the rest of us and therefore should be given power over us.  So, since that is an impossibility, since the end result – their lack of power – is in their minds clearly incorrect, then they will use any means to correct that end while at the same time feeding their insatiable anger.

So, we had (still have) Russia-gate, proven to be a witch hunt; we have had (still have) attempts to find one or another scandal, still unsuccessful; we continually have name calling (racist, white supremacist, Nazi, etc.) without evidence of the epithet; we have daily spin on everything the President does to make it seem somehow negative or, if impossible to create a negative spin then credit is given to any and everyone other than the President. 

The anger and hatred are not directed exclusively at the President.  Any and all of his supporters are fair game.  Not just those who work within his administration, but the common person on the street who seems to be a supporter of the President or his policies is a possible target for the Democrats’ hate.  Those who are still brave enough to exercise their free speech rights and do such things as wear a MAGA hat do so with the knowledge that they may be the target of both verbal and physical abuse.  This, of course, is a certain way to chill if not completely silence such speech which the Democrats do not want to hear.  (The fact that this so clearly reveals their lack of respect for the founding principles of this country along with our Constitution is a topic for another post).

The anger and hatred consume the Democrats in Congress as they demand hearing after hearing on lost causes in their attempt to remove the President from office.  It consumes all the 2020 Democrat candidates as the focus of debates and stump speeches is to verbally condemn Trump – that is, Trump the man, because it is hard to condemn his policies which are all benefiting this country and its citizens.  But it is, indeed, the man that they hate because, though not one of them, he was able to fairly and honestly beat them in an election that they still believe they were entitled to win.

The press, of course, is a part of this parade of hate.  Indeed, the Democrat politicians, not to mention their supporters, often seem to be nothing more than the lap dogs of the press.  Thus, when the NYT prints a bogus story intended to dredge up again the bogus allegations against Justice Kavanaugh, even without a thought the Democrats jump and begin a new campaign of hate against the Justice.  (And, this is no less horrific than the first campaign which was intended to ruin a man’s life along with that of his family simply because he was not one of them.  For detailed thoughts on this disgusting attack on the man and our country’s values the first time, see my earlier posts from September and October 2018, most of which address aspects of the Kavanaugh hearings. Here are a few links: LINK 1, LINK2, LINK3, LINK4,  LINK5, LINK6, LINK7, LINK8,  LINK9,  LINK10.)

This is all terribly pathetic, and one wants to dismiss this behavior as simply that of spoiled children who did not get their way, for that is all that it really is.  But one cannot do that, because in this instance the children throwing the temper fit have enough power in their hands that they can truly use that fit to destroy our country and our way of life.

That destruction has already begun.  As noted above, the strength of our First Amendment rights is being diminished.  People are berated into keeping silent if they do not spout the words and beliefs that the Democrats demand.  The Second Amendment is not even acknowledged as a right when Democrats believe they can simply create an absolute ban on all arms.  Our whole electoral process is not respected by the Democrats when every time they do not win they believe they can simply attack the result along with the winner in any and every way possible hoping to get somehow the result that they want.

When the strategy is silence the opposition, take away their rights, remove those with whom you disagree by political force rather than political process, ignore facts that are inconvenient or restructure them to support your narrative and your claim to power, then we are moving away from our Democratic Republic and toward some sort of Totalitarian system in which the people have little say in their own lives.

It is sad that the spoiled Democrats are willing to give up what makes this country great in return for holding and expanding their own power.  It is sad that the Democrats believe that they have a right to do this, based on their seeming belief that they are somehow superior to the rest of us.  The Democrats did not get the prize they wanted in 2016, but their behavior since then is proof positive that they do not deserve it.

While the Democrats seem to have chosen to be fully consumed by their anger and hate, we as a country do not need to let it consume us as well.  We do not need to accept their ugly allegations about the President, his policies, his supporters; instead we can understand that these are nothing more than their temper weapons designed to gratify their anger and give them the power they crave. 

The elected Democrats are not doing the peoples work but their own work – the sole goal being to eliminate all opposition to their power.  The media is their partner in this means justify the ends campaign.  We do not have to join in.  Their rhetoric may be persuasive, but that does not make it right or true.  We can believe it and go like sheep to the slaughter of all that our country stands for, or we can refuse to be a part.  We can continue to stand for the principles of this country that are not those of anger and hate but of fairness and justice and rule of law, of freedom and liberty, and of a voice for all the people.