Racists, Fundamentalists and Dictators

What is common among racist, fundamentalist, and a dictator? They all believe that there is one way or one thing that is right. All of them depend on belief rather that reality and logic. All are brainwashed, while racist and fundamentalist are brainwashed by somebody that they trust, a dictator is brainwashed by himself to think that he is engaging in a rightful behavior.

Monotheist religions have a lot to do with the narrative of the existence of one right way. Such an approach of absolutism exposes the immaturity, illiterateness, and intolerance of the thought process. Nothing in this world is stagnant, everything evolves over time. That's why one sees so many matured people of the West end up being agnostic or atheist.

The backbone of the typical American racism has always been Southern Christian fundamentalism. While others joined into such racist crusades, it is the one sect of a specific religion that led the way. This is not to say that a monotheistic religion must cause fundamentalism and racism, but it is likely to cause because of its intolerance of other ideas and beliefs.

A majority of fundamentalists supported slavery. One might note that the world’s largest fundamentalist sect, the Southern Baptists, were openly and explicitly founded for the express purpose of endorsing slavery as God’s law. When Lyndon Johnson signed into law on July 2, 1964, the Civil Rights Act, the legislation that was proposed by U.S. President John F. Kennedy in June 1963, but opposed by filibuster in the Senate, the Southern Democrats were not happy.

The night that Democratic President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, his special assistant Bill Moyers noticed that the president was in a pensive mood. To respond to Moyer's query, Johnson replied, “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come.” He was unfortunately accurate in his assessment.

Though some Democrats had switched to the Republican party prior to this, the actual exodus happened after Johnson signed these acts. This started the change in the fundamental basis of the two political parties.

The change wasn’t total or immediate. During the late 1960s and early '70s, white Southerners were still transitioning away from the Democratic party. Republican Richard Nixon employed a “Southern strategy” that appealed to the racism of Southern white voters. This is how these racist Democrats had been then harnessed by the Republican party under the leadership of Nixon. By the time Ronald Reagan became president in 1980, the Republican party’s hold on white Southerners was firm. Today, the Republican party remains the party of the South that philanders with racism.

In his booklet, Negro and White, John R. Rice, one of the favorite preachers of the racists described opponents of segregation as “socialists, the communists, the professional and paid Negro leaders, and politicians who hope to gain votes, raise enmities, hurl epithets, threaten force, and incite hate.” Fundamentalists always claim people who are opposed to their hateful policies as the real haters and the people against what is right.

Similarly a dictator also believes that there is one right path and that's what the dictator prescribes. Views of everybody else are wrong or fake. This is exactly what Donald Trump has been saying with regards to the mainstream media and his opposition. With so much ism's and dictatorship in the world, time has come for everyone to follow the religion of humanity, respect all humanity and invest in education and awareness. We cannot go any lower than the nadir that we have already descended into.