ON DEHUMANIZATION

The world is filled with bad news. There seems to be an endless supply of malice, and the expression of evil appears to be getting more and more diverse. Take, as examples, the leveraging of xenophobia and bigotry in an attempt to win an American presidential election, the deteriorating race relations in the United States, the recent terror attacks in Brussels, drone strikes, and the rise of ISIS in the Middle East. The proliferation of tragic realities does not, in fact, represent a progression of evil but rather intensifying manifestations of the same, simple phenomenon. This phenomenon transcends these examples and cuts across time, geography, race, ethnicity, and gender. This phenomenon is dehumanization.