Demons at the door

April 14, 2011

Dear Julie,

Some opponents of a proposition that would have banned smoking in public places in Cape Girardeau demonized the American Cancer Society for contributing thousands of dollars to the campaign. They pointed out that a company that makes a stop-smoking drug is a major contributor to the ACS and therefore has a monetary interest in ACS's success at promoting anti-smoking campaigns.

The American Cancer Society is supposed to do whatever it can to help prevent cancer. Many people who die of cancer ask that memorial donations be sent to the ACS. Most of us have contributed in some way to the organization, perhaps by participating in a 5K run to raise awareness of breast cancer or by sponsoring a runner to help raise money.

How did the American Cancer Society become the enemy? By questioning its intentions. Money, not sparing people from disease, had to be its motivation.

We think of chambers of commerce as smiling people in suits who do their best to promote a positive business environment for their communities. But in 2008, 45 donors accounted for nearly half the $149 million contributed to the tax-exempt U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Does that make the chamber a shill for Big Business?

Bad example.

In politics and in general, if all that matters is winning, demonizing someone or some group is effective. We must have demons to blame and vilify. If not them, who?

We must have angels, too, to rescue us from the villains. We love firefighters and superheroes and extraordinary feats of selflessness. We think selflessness is extraordinary.

Alchemists claimed the ability to transmute base metals into silver or gold, the earthly versions of the moon and sun. To do so, they first had to reduce the base metals to their materia prima, their fundamental substance. Essence.

Demonizing keeps us from examining the essence of the issue before us.

In the English newspaper The Guardian, columnist Richard Wolff demonizes capitalism, saying corporate America's demands to reduce debt by cutting social programs and worker benefits are like someone who has been convicted of patricide demanding leniency because he's an orphan. The bailout rescued them. Now they want the middle class to pay.

Demonizing for fun and profit: tyrants, big business, carbon dioxide, conservatives, liberals, poor people, rich people, Western medicine, greed, gullibility, Barack Obama, the tea party, trans fats, skinny models, NPR, Fox News, monosodium glutamate, smokers, nonsmokers, bicyclists, performance-enhancing drugs, sweet tea. Name your villain.

The problem is, everyone and anyone can be blamed for the state of the world: Heck, we could even end up blaming ourselves.

Or, selfless superheroes that we truly are, we could figure out how to rescue each other.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.