The Us-Versus-Them Mentality In 2008’s Presidential Campaign Essay Example for Free

The Us-Versus-Them Mentality In 2008s Presidential Campaign EssayThe graphic novel, Maus, by stratagem Spiegelman, tells the story of a Polish Jews memories of his experience during the Holocaust. Drawn as mice, the Jews have faced a variety of psychological warfare, including xenophobia, scapegoating, dehumanization, and us-vs. -them dichotomy where the terrible up to nowts of the Holocaust were justified. The Holocaust was virtuoso of the most terrible events in human history, and decades later, scholars from numerous branches of academia still strive to downstairsstand such a dark diachronic event. Unfortunately, aspects leading up to the Holocaust still exist in the world today.While few genuine issues compare in magnitude to that of the Holocaust, such activities such as xenophobia, scapegoating, dehumanization, and divisive, dichotomous thought pervade populations everywhere. Although such negative sentiments al slipway threaten negative results, in the US in the ye ar 2008, one major historical movement and event occurred that promises a possible relief from such a divisive past. This historic movement and event is Barack Obamas campaign, in which an African the Statesn ran for President of the United States and was the victor, becoming the firstly ever African American president of the country.But the campaign was not free of strife. This paper argues that sequence dichotomous, us vs. them elements in the year 2008s presidential campaign were not systematic anyy acted out as they were in the Holocaust, there existed similar instances of that learning ability during the campaign timeframe. In the past decade, partisanship has set two major groups of Americans at odds with each early(a) in the form of Democrat vs. Republicans. However, this past presidential campaign, or even in the past decade, the fever pitch of us vs. them has not escaped many great deal, and Democrat or Republican began to be expressed in layers of differences.Chuck Raasch of USAToday reports that Americans fought a terrible well-bred war on all three fronts. A century later, Northerners saw Southerners as oppressors during struggles over genteel rights, and Southerners viewed Northerners as meddlers. Even the Inside the Beltway label continues a deeply rooted, us-versus-them mentality of the nations capital. Despite the elevation of a black man and a light woman to the Democratic and Republican presidential tickets, respectively, the election of 2008 has vie often to those divides.In her article Unleashed, Palin Makes a Pit Bull mind Tame, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post describes the herds response, who were waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a cyberspace and told him, Sit down, boy (p. A03). While divisive expressions such as these seem far away from the Holocaust, one must consider Peter Suedfelds words regarding the genesis of anti-Semitism in the time in the first place the HolocaustSherif et al. (1961/1988) demonstrated how leaders, by framing situations in terms of intergroup contestation, can produce hostility and vulturous behaviour between component groups. We can see the workings of an ingrained us-vs-them mentality in data-based minimal groups (Tajfel et al. , 1971), which are composed in a completely arbitrary way and whose members never even meet each other (3). This explanation could very well describe the actions of leaders in political parties as well as group behaviors in response to leaders.Sarah Palin could be seen to frame situations such that intergroup competition occurs, as it does in the Republican furor over the Democrate presidential candidate. Partisanship was not the only array of us-versus-them behavior during the past year. Dedication to ones country came into question in which the concepts of American versus anti-American were introduced. Acc ording to Bob Lonsberry in his article Whats Wrong With a Marxist? , a individual who is American is one who sees two irreconcilable extremes between Karl Marx and John Locke, and if a person takes into regard the belles-lettres of Karl Marx, then he or she is anti-American. If an American is to be truly American, they must adopt similar ways of presupposeing in which Marxism, communist, and other similar ontological principles must be absolutely shunned because they repudiate everything America stands for. These sentiments before the Holocaust were similar. In place of anti-Americans were the Jews. Andre Minaeu writes To the Nazis, all things seriously afflicting Germany and the Aryan slipstream were ultimately Jewish or Jewish-inspired. In this sense, the Jewish people were the quintessential enemy of Nazi totalitarianism.The latter elevated Jewry, so to speak, to the rank of an evil ontological principle against which struggle was to be universal (17). In this sense, anti-Ame ricans are philosophically against everything Americans stand for and should be beaten politically, while Jews represented everything the Nazis stood for, which caused them to become an evil philosophical principle. No other dichotomy is more apparent in both Holocaust and the 2008 presidential campaign than ethnicity. The question of raceand ones ethnicitybecame a large factor due to the mixed-race heritage of Barack Obama.Historically, part of Obamas ethnicity had been under the awful yoke of slavery and then the struggle of civil rights. One can see this in the words of Martin Luther King, jr. I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama petty(a) black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers (60). The question of Jewsishnessboth an ethnicity as well as a belief systemwas guinea pig of life and death for six million people during World War II. Historically, Jews have also been slaves, and their ethnicity and devotion have played a large role in their struggles in past centuries.Paul Johnson explains this in his take for The History of the Jews by quoting Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an ex-prisoner of the Nazis We have learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the purview of those who are excluded, under suspicion, ill-treated, powerless, oppressed, and scorned, in short those who suffer (2). It is not a subtle expression in either of these two statements that the writers and speakers felt that their world was divided in groups, and they were the them in the phrase us-versus-them. While the us-versus-them mentality might seem as if it would haunt human interaction for all time, there have eternally been historical figures who have sought to overcome the divisiveness by seeking common ground. Perhaps the most storied of those is Abraham Lincoln, who spoke these words A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently hal f slave and half free. I do not want the Union to be fade out I do not expect the house to fall but I do expect it will cease to be divided (Lincoln). Martin Luther King, Jr.is another figure who sought to overcome shabbiness and inequality through nonviolent means. Current scholars are improving and applying techniques for nonviolent conflict resolution (Suedfeld 2006, p. 7). In regards to the Holocaust, there are many studies about the tragedy in many areas of study, from psychology to politics to sociology, as evidenced by the books The Making of the Holocaust Ideology and Ethics in the Systems Perspective by Andre Mineau and Canadian Psychology addressing Holocaust reverberations fifty years later. Lastly, the end of the 2008 campaign year drew to a close, and Barack Obama has been elective President.While he emerged from one of the two major political parties in the US, his own sentiments in his book The Audacity of Hope strive for a bipartisan rather than a divided appro ach perchance theres no escaping our great political divide, an endless clash of armies, and any attempts to alter the rules of strife are futile. Or maybe the trivialization of politics has reached a point of no return, so that most people see it as just one more diversion, a sport We paint our faces red or blue and cheer our side and boo their side But I dont think so.They are out there those ordinary citizens who have grown up in the midst of all the political and cultural battles, but who have found a way to make peace with their neighbors, and themselves (pp. 50-51). emphasis stemmed from rabid divisiveness is what made the Holocaust so terrible. Therefore, any attempts to heal the us-versus-them mentality would have to be the opposite peaceful actions that strive to bring humans together. Fortunately, if one could take lessons from Mahatma Ghandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and Barack Obama, then the possibility that inharmonic sentiments in the human popul ace may never take seed.WORKS CITEDJohnson, Paul. A History of the Jews. HarperPerennial (1988). King, Jr. , Martin Luther. The Dream. Speech. Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC. 28 August 1963. Lincoln, Abraham. House Divided Speech. Speech. Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858. Milbank, Dana. Unleashed, Palin Makes a Pit Bull Look Tame. Washington Post. October 7, 2008 A03. Minaeu, Andre. The Making of the Holocaust Ideology and Ethics in the Systems Perspective. Amsterdam Atlanta, Georgea Rodopi, 1999.