If one takes a leisurely stroll through the history of strife, war and genocide on this planet, you’ll find an underlying common denominator to each explosion of death and destruction. And this common denominator can be summed up in one word: Exclusion.

War and genocide are insanity incarnate. And they lead to enormous profits for the right few who happen to be in the right place at the right time.

But how do these “elites” get into that position? By long-term campaigns to create an atmosphere of exclusion of others. Most visible in our history is the rhetoric of Hitler who excluded Jews and others from German society, by first blaming them for all of Germany’s problems after the “Great War.” This rhetoric was boosted by the black propaganda campaigns of Josef Goebbels. And Germany, being intensely industrial, turned this exclusion into murder on an industrial scale.

Stalin’s campaign of exclusion was basically toward anyone he perceived to be a threat. And that lead to the exile and death of 30 million or so Russians by way of Siberian Gulags, the Russian version of death camps. Stalin saw enemies in just about everyone he met, the hallmark of insanity.

Rwanda saw the systematic denigration of Tutsi’s by the Hutus through the medium of a broadcast radio campaign of hate. The same people behind the campaign then provided piles of machetes and other weapons and you know the rest. This was a campaign of exclusion to make the Tutsis into hated “others” that could then be exterminated.

History has no shortage of examples: Bosnia, Cambodia, Armenia, and let us not forget the genocide of the native peoples of the North American continent. You get the idea.

In each and every case exclusion of “others” was the governing principle.

Labels

The idea that there are “others” that are “dangerous” or “not worthy” is one of the key tools used by propagandists to precipitate the explosions we know of as war and genocide. This is generally done with labels and classifications of “types” of people. Types that are supposed to be perceived as “bad” or “good.” But truth be told, if you aren’t in the “good” group to these folks, sooner or later…

Bad labels are things like “immigrants”—which is odd because everyone who isn’t a Native American in the United States is an immigrant. “Muslims” was another label frequently used during the Trump days, just to make sure the anti-religion bent of his administration did not include his brand of “Christian.” As an aside, many people lauded Trumps “protection” of the First Amendment’s freedom of religion clause, failing to recognize that he was actually perverting it so as to protect only his base of hard core right-wing evangelistic Christians.

The problem with our media outlets is that in their zeal to get stories out, they got lazy in recognition of the use of labels to create classes and divisions between people: Gen-Z, liberals, conservatives, radical liberals, populist, you name it. And thus played right into the hands of the propagandists. This of course does not apply to FOX, OAN, NewsMax, Breitbart and others in the rightwing shout-a-sphere, since they are propagandists, not media outlets.

Exclusion vs. Inclusion

In a governmental sense, inclusion is governing—with the consent of the governed. And exclusion is about ruling others—whether they like it or not.

Exclusion has at its core a lie. And that lie is that there are other races of men than human. Skin color, nationality, language, religion and the combinations of these do not make races. Every member of these “classes” is human. But Republican policies would love to have us forget this and foster hate, distrust and fear of these “others.” Why is this? Because people who are afraid, who have hate and distrust in their thinking processes make bad decisions.

This is how you get someone to vote against their own self interests and their own well being. And if that doesn’t work, Republican legislatures in many states are simply trying to exclude as many voters as possible from the rolls.

History is full of the lessons served by history about these basic facts. Yet in Republican-led states, these histories are now verboten in schools by legislative decree.

The damage, death and destruction of the history of exclusion on this planet is easy to see and learn. History is there for the reading. It isn’t hard. But those who would like to see these histories repeat themselves don’t want it learned.

The only path to our survival as a nation is inclusion. This is actually governing. Not ruling.

If in reading this you get the idea that the Republican policies of exclusion will lead to a future of death and destruction in our country, move to the head of the class. This is a stark prediction, but one that is supported by history’s lessons—and by examples in all too frequent news reports of current events.

We are coming up to a critically important election cycle. Study your history. Compare the candidates and their policies, pitches and platforms. Vote for the ones that include everyone because they will be the ones who want to govern and not rule.