19
19
How Hatred Builds The Walls of Society's Bungalow
"Frustration turns into hate."
             Napoleon Duarte, President of
             El Salvador
"politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the
systematic organization of hatreds."
                            Henry Adams
One more ingredient is necessary to make the notion of the
enemy click: hatred.  The persistence with which societies offer
permission to hate is astonishing.  Marxism gives the have-nots
permission to hate the haves.  Medieval Christianity gave permission
to hate heathens.  Islam gives permission to hate infidels. Unions give
permission to hate bosses.  Peace groups give permission to hate
militarists.  Conservatives give permission to hate liberals.  Even Jesus
gave permission to frown upon the rich.27  Each culture chooses an
enemy on which to blame a goodly portion of the earth's evil, and
turns hatred of that group into a virtue. But from what raw stock is this
group adhesive distilled?
A vast number of studies by clinical psychologists like N.H.
Azrin, R.R. Hutchinson and D.F. Drake show that frustration generates
rage.  Train a rat to run down a straight tunnel toward a piece of food.
When it reaches the tunnel's end, it gets to eat.  Then, place a Plexiglas
barrier in the rodent's path.  When it reaches the transparent obstacle,
the rat can still see its food, but can no longer reach it.  This is
frustration.  How does the animal respond?  By going into a fury.  If
you place a bottle brush next to the plastic barrier, the enraged rat will
tear the object to pieces.  Give him a smaller cousin, and he will beat
the heck out of the diminutive beast.28  From these observations, and a
host of human studies we'll go into later in this book, came one of
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