Created Equal

Ministry of Love

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …

— United States Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776.


ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL,
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.

— George Orwell (1903 – 50), Animal Farm, 1945.

(Geeta Gandbhir & Sam Pollard, Why We Hate, 2019)

Liberty Is Not License

(Cathy Wilcox, The Age, 12 January 2021)




(Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided, PBS American Experience, WGBH, 2001)

Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 65) [16th President of the United States]:
Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
(First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1861)

Andrew Johnson (1808 – 75) [17th President of the United States]:
This is a country for white men and, by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men.

Garrett Epps (1950) [Law Professor, University of Baltimore]:
[Andrew Johnson] loved the idea of big rallies.
He loved to get up and make long speeches, largely about himself.
(Reinaldo Green & Kenny Leon, Citizen, Amend: The Fight for America, Episode 1, 2021)

Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 65):
Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow?
Never!…
At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected?
I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us.
It cannot come from abroad.
If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher.
As a nation of free men we must

• live through all time, or
• die by suicide. …

Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of … ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us?
And when such a one does, it will require the people to be:

• united with each other,
• attached to the government and laws, and
• generally intelligent,

to successfully frustrate his designs.
Distinction will be his paramount object, and … nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.
(Lyceum Address, 27 January 1838)

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Stephen Schmidt (1970) [Former Republican Strategist]:
Great presidents have been able to forge compromise.
President Obama was not able to do that, and the reason may well be the implacability of the people sitting on the other side of the table from him.
Sometimes you can’t get to "yes" with someone who won’t say anything other than "no."
(Michael Kirk, America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2020)

(Michael Kirk, Supreme Revenge: Battle for the Court, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2020)

Addison Mitchell McConnell (1942) [Republican Leader in the Senate]:
The single most important thing we want to achieve … is for President Obama to be a one-term president.
(Michelle Obama, Becoming, 2018, p 370)

Yoni Appelbaum [Senior Political Editor, The Atlantic]:
A conservatism defined by ideas can hold its own against progressivism,

• winning converts to its principles, and
• evolving with each generation.

A conservatism defined by identity reduces the complex calculus of politics to a simple arithmetic question—and at some point, the numbers no longer add up. …
The GOP’s efforts to cling to power by coercion instead of persuasion have illuminated the perils of defining a political party in a pluralistic democracy around a common heritage, rather than around values or ideals.
(How America Ends, The Atlantic, December 2019, emphasis added)

Paul Weyrich (1942 – 2008) [Co-founder, Heritage Foundation]:
How many of our Christians have the ["good government"] syndrome?
They want everybody to vote.
I don't want everybody to vote.
Elections are not won by a majority of people.
They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now.
As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections, quite candidly, goes up as the voting populace goes down.

Ronald Reagan (1911 – 2004):
I know this is a non-partisan gathering, and so I know you can't endorse me.
But I only brought that up because I want you to know that I endorse you [evangelicals] and what you are doing.
(The Roundtable, Dallas, August 1980)

The American Promise

This nation … was founded on the principle that all men are created equal.
And that the rights of every man are diminished, when the rights of one man are threatened.
Now is the time for this nation to fulfill its promise. …

We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. …
The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities. …
Next week I shall ask the Congress of the United States … to make a commitment … to the proposition that race has no place in American life or law.

— John Kennedy (1917 – 63), Civil Rights Address, 11 June 1963.


[It] is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.
And we shall overcome.

— Lyndon Johnson (1908 – 73), The American Promise, 15 March 1965.


When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." …

Injustice anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere. …
Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. …
[Freedom] is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. …

We cannot accept these conditions of oppression.
For this is not a struggle for ourselves alone.
It is a struggle for the soul of America. …

Let us all hope that:

• the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away, and
• the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities,

and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

— Martin King (1929 – 68)


Martin Luther King [is] the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation — from the standpoint of:

• communism,
• the Negro, and
• national security.

— William Sullivan (1914 – 77), Head of COINTELPRO, FBI, 30 August 1963.

(David Grubbin, LBJ, PBS American Experience, WGBH, October 1991)

Martin Luther King (1929 – 68):
[If] physical death is the price a man must pay to free his children from the permanent death of the spirit, then nothing could be more redemptive.
(The Rising Tide of Racial Consciousness, 6 September 1960)

John Kennedy (1917 – 63):
Other people, [George Bernard Shaw] said, "see things and say, 'Why?'
But I dream things that never were, and I say, 'Why not?'"
The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics, whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities.
We need men who can dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

(Freedom Ride, Anniston, Alabama, 14 May 1961)

Evan Thomas (1951) [Writer]:
Jack Kennedy was very conscious of images.
When the television cameras and Life magazine arrived down South [in 1963,] that's the moment when the federal government cannot sit back anymore.

The Rise of Trumpism

Ministry of Truth

Sans-culottes

Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. …

Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God,
never without belief in a devil.

— Eric Hoffer (1902 – 83)

(Barak Goodman, Clinton, PBS American Experience, WGBH, 2012)

Hillary Clinton (1947):
[To] be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. …
They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic … you name it.
[But,] unfortunately, there are people like that.
And he has lifted them up. …

But the other basket are … people who feel that:

• the government has let them down,
• the economy has let them down,
• nobody cares about them,
• nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures.

And they’re just desperate for change. …
Those are the people we have to understand and empathize with.
(Amy Chozick, Hillary Clinton Calls Many Trump Backers "Deplorables," and GOP Pounces,
The New York Times, 10 September 2016)

Mitt Romney (1947):
There are 47% of the people:

• who will vote for [President Obama] no matter what …
• who are dependent upon government,
• who believe that they are victims …
• who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them …
• who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, [and that] the government should give it to them. …

These are people who pay no income tax. …
[My] job is not to worry about those people.
I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
(David Corn, Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He Really Thinks of Obama Voters, Mother Jones, 17 September 2012)

Ross Garnaut (1946):
In the United States … high incomes have risen [thoughout the period since the Great Crash of 2008,] while those of ordinary citzens have fallen. …
[If] living standards for ordinary people continue to fall, this will have large and unpredictable ideological and political effects.
(Dog Days, 2013, p 30)

(Liz Garbus, American Carnage, The Fourth Estate: The NY Times and Trump, Episode 3, 2018)

Eric Hoffer (1902 – 83)

The main requirements [of a mass movement leader] seem to be: …

• a fanatical conviction that he is in possession of the one and only truth;
• faith in his destiny and luck;
• a capacity for passionate hatred;
• a cunning estimate of human nature;
• a delight in symbols (spectacles and ceremonials); [and]
• [an] unbounded brazenness which finds expression in a disregard of consistency and fairness …

The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership.
What counts is

• the arrogant gesture,
• the complete disregard of the opinion of others,
• the singlehanded defiance of the world.

Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership. …

[The] mass movement leader … draws his inspiration from the sea of upturned faces, and the roar of the mass is as the voice of God in his ears.
He sees an irresistible force within his reach — a force he alone can harness. …

The reason that the inferior elements of a nation can exert a marked influence on its course is that they are wholly without reverence toward the present.
They see their lives and the present as spoiled beyond remedy and they are ready to waste and wreck both: hence

• their recklessness, and
• their will to chaos and anarchy.

They also crave to dissolve their spoiled, meaningless selves in some soul-stirring spectacular communal undertaking — hence their proclivity for united action.
Thus, they are among the early recruits

• of revolutions,
• [of] mass migrations, and
• of religious, racial and chauvinist movements,

and they imprint their mark upon these upheavals and movements which shape a nation’s character and history. …

The ideal potential convert is the individual

• who stands alone,
• who has no collective body he can blend with and lose himself in and so mask the pettiness, meaninglessness and shabbiness of his individual existence. …

A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not

• by its doctrine and promises, but
• by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence.

It cures the poignantly frustrated not

• by conferring on them an absolute truth, or
• by remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable,

but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves—and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole. …
It is futile to judge the viability of a new movement by

• the truth of its doctrine, and
• the feasibility of its promises.

What has to be judged is its corporate organization for quick and total absorption of the frustrated.
Where new creeds vie with each other for the allegiance of the populace, the one which comes with the most perfected collective framework wins. …

The self-mastery needed in overcoming their appetites gives [the frustrated] an illusion of strength.
They feel that in mastering themselves they have mastered the world. …

All active mass movements strive … to interpose a fact-proof screen between:

• the faithful, and
• the realities of the world. …

It is the true believer’s ability to “shut his eyes and stop his ears” to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy.
He cannot be:

• frightened by danger, nor
• disheartened by obstacles, nor
• baffled by contradictions,

because he denies their existence. …

The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. …

The fanatics of various hues … 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. …
And [so] it is easier for a fanatic Communist to be converted to fascism, chauvinism or Catholicism than to become a sober liberal. …

It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad.
We cannot hate those we despise. …
The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners.
An American’s hatred for a fellow American (for Hoover or Roosevelt) is far more virulent than any antipathy he can work up against foreigners.
It is of interest that the backward South shows more xenophobia than the rest of the country.
Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life. …

The practice of terror serves the true believer not only

• to cow and crush his opponents, but also
• to invigorate and intensify his own faith.

Every lynching in our South not only

• intimidates the Negro, but also
• invigorates the fanatical conviction of white supremacy. …

The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse.
It is doubtful whether a movement which does not profess some preposterous and patently irrational dogma can be possessed of that zealous drive which "must either win men or destroy the world."

(The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, 1951)


To an outside observer, an individualist society seems in the grip of some strange obsession.
Its ceaseless agitation strikes him as a kind of madness. …

When we are conscious of our worthlessness, we naturally expect others to be finer and better than we are.
We demand more of them than we do of ourselves, and it is as if we wished to be disappointed in them.
Rudeness luxuriates in the absence of self-respect. …

Now that the new industrial revolution is on the way to solving the problem of means, … it behooves us to remember that man's only legitimate end in life is to finish God's work — to bring to full growth the capacities and talents implanted in us.
A population dedicated to this end will not necessarily overflow with the milk of human kindness, but it will not try to prove its worth by proclaiming the superiority and exclusiveness of its nation, race, or doctrine.

(The Ordeal of Change, 1963)

Rule of the Red Queen

Alice:
There's no use trying … one can't believe impossible things.

Red Queen:
I daresay you haven't had much practice …
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

— Lewis Carroll | Charles Dodgson (1832 – 98), Through the Looking-Glass, 1871.


Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because,

• owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread information, and
• owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.

— Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970), Sceptical Essays, 1928.

Carl Sagan (1934 – 96):
Many of those alleging satanic abuse describe grotesque orgiastic rituals in which infants are murdered and eaten.
Such claims have been made about reviled groups by their detractors throughout European history, including:

• the Cataline conspirators in Rome;
• the Passover 'blood libel' against the Jews; and
• the Knights Templar as they were being dismantled in fourteenth-century France.

Ironically, reports of cannibalistic infanticide and incestuous orgies were among the particulars used by Roman authorities to persecute the early Christians.
(Demon-Haunted World, 1997, p 151)

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Alex Jones (1974):
And I’ll tell you, it is surreal to talk about issues here on air and then word for word hear Trump say it two days later. …

These people are not fricking humans, OK?
Hillary Clinton is a demon damned to hell!

Donald Trump (1946):
She’s the devil. …
It's true.

Alex Jones (1974):
As we’ve been saying for three years, Hillary is the founder of ISIS, along with Obama.

Donald Trump (1946):
He founded ISIS, and I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.

Alex Jones (1974):
"Was Cruz’s Father Linked to the JFK Assassination?
Cuban hired by Lee Harvey Oswald bears striking resemblance to Cruz."

Donald Trump (1946):
You know, his father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald's being shot.
(Michael Kirk, United States of Conspiracy, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2020)

Alex Jones (1974):
[A] copy of [Obama's] new fake birth certificate.
Now, we’ve looked at it, we’re going to go over why it’s fake, how it’s a composite …
(Where's the Birth Certificate?, 25 May 2011)

Stephen Schmidt (1970) [Former Republican Strategist]:
[Sarah Palin] is the first of generation of politicians who live [in] a post-truth environment.
She was … a serial liar.
She would say things that are simply not true, or things that were picked up from the Internet …
And this obliteration of fact from fiction, of truth from lie, has become now endemic in American politics.
But it started then.

Stephen Schmidt (1970):
When [Sean Spicer] goes out and says,"This is the biggest crowd size ever" — what he's saying in essence is, "What's true is what the leader says is true."
The obliteration of the line between truth and the lie is fundamental to grasp because it's so elemental to a functioning democracy. …

Kellyanne Conway (1967):
[What you're saying is] a falsehood, and … Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that. …

Chuck Todd (1972):
Look, alternative facts are not facts; they’re falsehoods.

Donald Trump (1946):
One thing this shows is how far over they go here. …
This goes all the way down here, all the way down. …
You don't see that in the pictures.
But when you look at this tremendous sea of love — I call it a sea of love — it's really something special.
(America's Great Divide: Obama To Trump, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2020)

(Geeta Gandbhir & Sam Pollard, Tribalism, Why We Hate, 2019)

Hannah Arendt (1906 – 75):
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not

• the convinced Nazi or
• the convinced Communist,

but people for whom

• the distinction between fact and fiction (that is, the reality of experience) and
• the distinction between true and false (that is, the standards of thought)

no longer exist.
(The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951 / 1968)

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Sandy Hook

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,
the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

— Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, 15 December 1791.


[The] state of men without civil society … is nothing else but a mere war of all against all …

— Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679), Leviathan, 1651.

(Michael Kirk, Trump's Divided States of America, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2017)


(Richard Rowley, American Insurrection, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2021)

Alex Jones (1974):
It’s got "inside job" all written all over it. …
Sandy Hook is a synthetic — completely fake, with actors — in my view, manufactured.
(Michael Kirk, America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2020)

Mark Bankston:
From then on it was an absolute quest to destroy [the victims'] parents.
[An avid follower of Jones and InfoWars] began stalking Mr Pozner and his family in south-central Florida, [and] started threatening their lives. …
[She was] sent to federal prison for [5 months.]

Alex Jones (1974):
I, myself, have almost had like a form of psychosis … where I basically thought everything was staged, even though I've now learned a lot of times things aren’t staged. …
And so, over the years, I’ve … had a chance to believe that children died, and it’s a tragedy.
(Michael Kirk, United States of Conspiracy, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2020)

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A Show of Force: Lafayette Square

(Michael Kirk, Trump's American Carnage, PBS Frontline, 2021)

(Photo Op: Trump And Black Lives Matter, Vice, 2020)