Just Under the Surface

In the current political climate, where Christians consider Nazi racism to be one legitimate viewpoint even if they do not themselves embrace it, it is certainly possible to believe that the time is not far away when conservatives will institute an evil reign of terror. It seems unlikely that this will happen, but could Germans in 1933 have guess what Hitler would do? And he did it because they let him.

We are surrounded by nice people all day every day. But occasionally we get glimpses of the evil that hides in human nature and which can come out under the right circumstances. Here are some examples.

First example. I had a student a few years ago who was very smart and dedicated, and very nice. Strange topics sometimes come up in individual conversations during laboratory sessions. For some reason, some of us were talking about Vlad the Impaler and this student, with a straight face, made the case that he deserved to be the national hero of Romania. This student, so nice on the outside, harbored at least this bit of evil in her heart. If she should ever in a future dictatorship be in a position to make decisions about what to do with political dissidents, such as myself, what would she do? I doubt she would come up with the idea, but I also doubt she would resist it if a future dictator liked the idea of impaling his enemies.

Second example. In Durant, Oklahoma, a white man who identified himself as “Goofy” went on a verbal rampage against all Mexicans, and said that World War III is going to begin right here with whites against immigrants. Most white people do not feel the way he does, but there must be at least a couple of million people who do and who can cause an immense amount of terrorism once they get started. All they need is some event that will unleash their currently latent fury, like (in this case) hearing a woman speak Spanish on a cell phone. (The woman has been in America legally for 40 years.).

We all have evil in our hearts; evolution has made human nature both good and bad. While altruism is part of human nature, we must understand that we are altruistic only toward those people whom we consider to be inside of our group. Slowly through history we have expanded the boundaries of what we consider our group to be. To many people, altruism extends not only to all humans of every race, but to higher animals, to trees, etc. But there are millions of people who still consider other races to be outside the realm of altruism and therefore not deserving even the simple decency of being allowed to live.

Even a small terrorist minority can ignite the worst elements of human nature and cause a wave of terrorism. Let’s hope (stupidly, perhaps) that this does not happen. Conservative religion, whether Christian or Muslim, frequently unleashes the worst in human nature.

This essay appeared on my science blog, without the final sentence.

Goodbye Old Folks, Hello Guns

The nursing home down the street from me has closed. The first thing I noticed was that there was no longer any liquid garbage on the street outside. The nursing home staff always poured lots of uncontained liquid garbage into dumpsters, which would then leak out all over the street and cause a stench. (Isn’t this against the law? At least they did not pour uncontained shit into the dumpster, as far as I know). I noticed that the street was not an open sewer. It was only then that I noticed that the parking lot was usually empty, except when it had pickup trucks of the kind that handymen use.

This nursing home is run by the local fundamentalist church. Apparently, they spread themselves too thin by running this nursing home. They apparently need to focus their efforts. And I am pretty sure what those efforts are. They mainly want to focus on getting their members to buy guns and have them ready to use, perhaps in the near future. I do not know this, but I have evidence that suggests it. This was the church that sponsored what they called a freedom rally a few years ago. The door prize was an assault weapon. By shutting down the nursing home, which I suspect was plagued by health code violations, this church can afford more assault weapons.

Another thing they can focus on is to verbally attack evolutionary scientists like me. This is the church that put on their marquee, “Evolution: The science of calling God a liar.” They have guns; I am their enemy, they think; should I be scared? Maybe. I am certainly vigilant. I keep a low profile. I never put bumper stickers on my car, and seldom put campaign posters in my lawn. (I did once. It was a sign urging a no vote on state question 777, which gave almost unlimited power to agribusiness corporations. Amazingly enough, the question was defeated.) I still walk to work, right out in the open, sometimes wearing an evolution shirt, but I am ready to start driving, by an alternate route, if necessary.

Rural Oklahoma fundamentalists and racists have a pent-up anger that needs only a slight stimulus in order to erupt. Just a couple of days ago, a Durant, Oklahoma man went on a verbal rampage against a Mexican woman, cursing her for being an immigrant and speaking Spanish. (She was indeed an immigrant, but has resided in America legally for 40 years.) He threatened to start World War Three over immigration. The woman shot a video, which was aired on a local news channel.

Of course, that lone crazy man cannot start a war by himself, and most people just considered him batshit. But there is A LOT of pent-up anger and violence in millions of conservatives in America. All they need is the right stimulus, one big enough to begin a chain reaction of fury and religious zeal. We cannot know when that might occur. They could not start a war, but they could wreak a devastating amount of terrorism; this is something that just a few thousand of them could do—it would not require a mass uprising.

What might the stimulus be? Fundamentalist pastors claim that they speak the very words of God, and their “sheeple” follow them blindly, not even reading their Bibles. Some of these churches celebrate and encourage the hoarding of assault weapons. If a fundamentalist pastor wanted to start a terrorist uprising, there is not much that could stop him.

October update: They were just cleaning out the old folks home; the old folks are back.