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Thursday, November 13, 2003

Power Line: A footnote on the ethos of liberal hate: "Reader Dafydd ab Hugh expands on the underlying phenomenon in his own inimitable way: 'Extreme hatred is what we in mathematics call a self-organizing and replicating system. If you dump a bunch of cubes into a box, they will fall all higgledy-piggledy. But if you begin gently shaking the box, after a while, all the cubes will be oriented more or less the same direction, fitting snugly together. This is a self-organizing system; in the case of Bush hatred, when people around the typical liberal all profess hatred for Bush and keep prodding the new guy for how he feels, he will begin falling in line with the culture around him. This is called acculturation: the new guy feels cognitive dissonance until he begins to voice hatred towards Bush. After a while of saying it, at first just because it's expected, he begins to believe it metaprogramming).
'Intensification sets in because there is a feedback loop where the more extreme the expression of hatred, the more applause and approval the speaker receives. The system is self-replicating because there are a number of interests -- often in the strictest definition of the word, as in financial interests -- driving those within the cult of hatred to recruit more members, both to reduce the dissonance (haters like to surround themselves with haters, so they don't feel guilty or queasy) and also because there is strength and safety in numbers. Hence, self-organizing, self-replicating.
'We see this dynamic truly at work among militant Moslems; but it's the same dynamic among Bush haters: you conform yourself to the hatred around you, swim in it a while, until eventually you find yourself out recruiting new haters to the fold. It gives the hater a sense of belonging, and perhaps more important, a false sense of adventure, daring, and courage "Isn't this an exact explanation for love too? Where is there one iota of difference? I guess there has to be one. I just can't find it at the moment.

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eureka, California, United States
As Popeye once said,"I ams what I am." But then again maybe I'm not