It is natural for us to believe only what we want the truth to be. We are a product of bias, prejudice and bigotry that has formed throughout our lives. We tend to see things through a prism that shapes and distorts all that we take in and makes it conform to our own comfort.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to shake us from a position that we have long held and steadily reinforced with selective information that we have gathered for that purpose. We close our ears to anything that would threaten to disprove that with which we have become comfortable and we become annoyed if not angry with anyone who attempts to have us see another point of view.
We reject any input of any kind from people whose bigotry is different from our own. When we hear that a certain piece of information or opinion came from Glen Beck or Al Gore, we reject it out of hand as misinformation or simply laugh it off as being totally without merit because of its source. At other times we become committed to an idea or opinion because it gives us an opportunity to demonize someone we don't like and we resist all efforts to let them off the hook.
Any time a big problem or harmful event occurs we are quick to blame it on someone or something we are prejudice against. This is the basis for most conspiracy theories. The CIA killed Kennedy; Bush had the twin towers brought down; Roosevelt was in on the Pearl Harbor bombing and on and on. If there are five possible explanations for something and one of them fits our prejudice, the other four will never be considered.
That's just the way we are. Something goes wrong; someone we don't like has to be punished. Or in some cases, the person or persons actually responsible for the problem are held harmless because they are one of us. This is nothing new. This bigotry in action has been around forever. The problem only gets serious when it causes harmful action to occur.
In the mid nineteenth century, a Cholera epidemic claimed thousands of lives in London England. The common belief at the time was that it was caused by miasma (the odor and fumes from industrial pollution and sewerage) but it was not true. According to Bill Bryson's "At Home" subtitled "A Short History of Private Life" The true cause of the epidemic was drinking water polluted with human feces. This was discovered by a physician named John Snow.
Even though he was able to prove the cause beyond any rational doubt, and back it up with extensive research, Snow was detested for his evidence and accused of "being in the pocket of business interests which wished to continue to fill the air with pestilent vapors, miasmas and loathsome abominations of every kind and make themselves rich by poisoning their neighbors."
Unfortunately, the desire to blame business interests was stronger than the desire to stop the cholera epidemic and many people died in order to satisfy this hateful urge.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines a "Bigot" as one who is strongly partial to ones' own group, religion, race or politics and is intolerant of those who differ. We all tend toward bigotry, at least to some extent and in extreme cases the bigotry defines a person and becomes a way of life. It is hard not to be partial to ones' own group or ideological persuasion, especially when one has been educated into it from an early age. But the intolerance component of Bigotry is what causes all the problems.
Intolerance quickly escalates into hostility and when that happens, tragedy is just around the corner. People have shown that they are willing to sustain great tragedies in support of their bigotry. The Cholera epidemic is a case in point. Others include the American Civil War, lynching's, internment camps, unions that would rather see a plant closing than yield and budget disputes that result in government shut-downs.
Religion, one source of bigotry, tends to be passed from one generation to another and so, to some extent do racism, attitudes toward sexual preference, politics and more. Unfortunately, hostility toward other people and groups is also passed on. Members of the Ku Klux Klan, for instance, have generational dislike for African Americans, Jews Catholics and foreigners among others. Others are raised in families and cultures that have disdain for Corporations and the people who run them, Unions, Gays, various nationalities, different social levels and occupations.
These biases have a strong emotional content and any attempt to dislodge them by way of reason will usually prove futile. As has been said many times "You cannot reason someone out of something they have not been reasoned into."
Views of what or who is responsible for something that goes wrong is often formed by what or whom we have been taught to dislike. The collapse of heavy manufacturing in what has come to be known as the rust belt, was caused by unions who were constantly pushing for more pay, better benefits and more restrictive work rules backed up by repeated strikes and the threat of strikes, or greedy corporate executives who would do anything to protect their obscene salaries and bonuses. You can also throw the politicians who do the bidding of one group or the other into the mix.
While it is fairly harmless to rant against those who are the object of our bigotry, when the sentiment runs strong enough to begin to impact law and policy making, we are on dangerous ground. Ignorance, the handmaiden of bigotry, can trump reason and create disastrous results. The nineteenth century London cholera epidemic is a case in point. Thousands died rather than let an unpopular truth prevail.
Then there is the case of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. As President, Nixon did more to advance Liberal causes than Clinton and Clinton did more to advance Conservative causes than Nixon. Yet Nixon remains despised by Liberals and Clinton is broadly disliked by Conservatives. Sometimes our system of bigotry is such that our bias against an individual overrides our stated beliefs and ideals. In fact, Nixon proposed a National Healthcare bill very similar to the one supported by President Obama and it was killed in congress by Liberals. Go figure.
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