New reader comments on an old post

A new reader contacted me yesterday about adding a comment to a post from over a year ago. As I've had to close down the comments for anything over a couple of days old, I thought I'd add it here instead. This is from the original posting:

The search for easy labels and obvious scapegoats is as old as the news business. People don't want to think more than they have to: providing them with an easy, obvious person or group to blame for misfortune or bad news is, I hate to say it, a deeply rooted part of the human psyche. If it's not the Gypsies, it's the Jews. If it's not the Jews, it's the Mexicans, or the Masons, or whatever group will most easily satisfy the need to assign blame to among your listeners.

Perhaps the most reprehensible reaction seems to be the most common . . . something bad is happening? Who can we blame? It's sick. It's twisted. It often prevents logical thought. And it's absolutely human.

And the would-have-been-a-comment is:

Dunno about Canada . . . but the more whoever is in power can pit us against one another dividing us by race, looks, preferences and such, the more they can make us think it's the other one, and the more we fight, the more distracted we are from what they can do above our heads.

Sometimes it even gets other people fired up to fight wars against another. But a part is also in the mind naturally, too no doubt. It is sick. Ignorant, and horrible to imagine.

You've just gained a new reader.

Natilya