EGO, RESENTMENT, AND OUR TROUBLES
LBJ once told Bill Moyers, reflecting on racial resentment, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” Note that historians agree that it reflected LBJ’s deep understanding of the political utility of racism and resentment, not a personal endorsement of the sentiments, but how they were used for manipulation.
Historians emphasize that LBJ was describing a strategy used by elites (politicians, business leaders, landowners) to maintain power:
Keep poor white citizens focused on feeling superior to Black citizens: Prevent them from recognizing the economic exploitation they were experiencing. Maintain loyalty by appealing to racial hierarchy rather than material improvement in the lives of the white citizens. And this manipulation goes far beyond race, to ANY perceived differences that engender resentment.
In other words: divide by race, or other cultural/social differences, and control by resentment. This is seen as a longstanding pattern in American history — slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and even many 20th and 21st-century political campaigns. Identify a minority or some other “out group” and blame them for all of society’s ills. It wasn’t confined to America but to others seeking authoritarian rule throughout the world and history. Hitler and his henchmen did this to communists, educated elites, the mentally ill and disabled, the Roma, and especially to the Jews, with murderous results, in the millions.
Trump is doing this today.
Change the names of the groups in modern-day America–now to Latinos, anyone with brown skin, or an accent, and to anyone with a political stance left of MAGA (“own the libs”). Hitler had his Brownshirts–storm troopers that became the SA, and his secret police–the SS, who rounded these “undesirables” up and who cleared streets of protestors. Trump has his masked, nameless ICE thugs doing the same—terrorizing neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces, causing fear, disregarding Constitutional rights, and destroying property.
The pattern is the same, and the comparisons keep going–Hitler eventually coerced Germany into a one-party rule. Trump announced that the Republicans should nationalize elections, and has stated that, in essence, if Republicans don’t win, the elections are rigged and stolen.
Germany in the time of Hitler was in a state of very low morale. Their once-proud German heritage had suffered a severe and devastating defeat at the hands of the Allies in World War I, and they were suffering severely with a failed economy. The collective self-esteem of the German people was at an all-time low. Hitler played upon their feelings and fears by directing their resentment toward the Jews via what has come to be known as The Big Lie:
- Germany did not lose militarily on the battlefield
- Germany was betrayed from within, by supposed “enemies of the nation.”
- These “traitors” included:
- Jews
- Socialists and Marxists
- Democratic politicians
- Intellectuals and academic elites
- Anyone associated with the Weimar Republic
Hitler further argued:
- that Jews were secretly powerful,
- that they manipulated global finance and politics,
- and that they had conspired to defeat Germany.
The Big Lie worked because:
- It appealed to national humiliation after defeat
- It aligned with pre‑existing antisemitism
- It gave people a psychologically comforting explanation
- It allowed elites and militarists to avoid accountability
- Repetition through Nazi propaganda made it feel “true.”
This ties directly to the LBJ quote and to the dynamics discussed earlier: Leaders with evil intent can redirect public pain and its attending resentment toward scapegoats by creating a hierarchy of blame.
Hitler’s lies were pushed by his Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, who established almost total control over the media and cultural life in Nazi Germany. Through the process of Gleichschaltung (coordination), he forced radio, film, theater, and the press under state supervision, creating a monopoly on information that aimed to foster, and later maintain, public support for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. His control included:
- The Press: Through the 1933 Editor’s Law, Goebbels removed Jewish and liberal editors, forcing all journalists to register and adhere to Nazi ideology. Opposition newspapers were shut down, and the remaining press received daily instructions on what to publish and how to report news.
- Radio: Goebbels famously declared in 1933, “The radio belongs to us and to no one else!” He facilitated the mass production of affordable radios (”people’s receivers”) to bring Nazi propaganda directly into German homes.
- Film: He took control of the film industry, ensuring that no films were produced without his approval, and used cinema to push antisemitic messages and Nazi ideology.
- Culture: As head of the Reich Chamber of Culture (established in September 1933), he oversaw music, theater, and literature, banning “un-German” works and staging mass book burnings.
Trump is doing the same through non-stop attempts to discredit media not sympathetic to him, and coerce those formerly independent outlets to fall under his sphere of influence.
Hitler was able to reinforce and rebuild, albeit falsely, the self-esteem of the defeated and disoriented German people by convincing them that the Jews, and anything related to a democratic form of government, were the source of the wounds to Germany’s national pride and economy.
Are we going to let Trump and his propagandists do to us what Hitler and Goebbels did to the German people?
To Americans, please hear this: The German people were beaten down and humiliated after losing World War I. They were truly in a weakened and vulnerable state. We ARE NOT the German people of the 1930s. We have the greatest standard of living the world has ever known, and we enjoy tremendous freedoms–freedoms granted and guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.
Ask yourself: Is this really who I am? Is my ego so bruised and my self-esteem so low that I need to blame some group of “others” for my problems? Am I here to hate and resent? Is that really my purpose in life?
You’re an American. You help yourself and help others in need, and collectively as a nation, we defend life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is what we do and truly what makes our nation great. If you go back far enough, except for Native Americans, we are all immigrants to this land. The strength of our country is that it is constructed with people from every land in the world, and from 50 states into one nation–the great melting pot/salad bowl/mosaic: E Pluribus Unum–“From Many, One.”
We are NOT in the same boat as the German people were at the time of the Nazis, yet a sizeable percentage of our population has been conned by the biggest conman of our era–Donald Trump, who convinced those folks that they should hate others–people who don’t look like them, talk like them, worship like them, come from the same area of the country, or same background. That’s not love. That’s hate. That’s evil. Cast it out. Replace it with love. Love is the basis of all faith.
The fact is, we have ALL been lied to at one time or another in our lives. There is no shame in that, it’s just part of life experience. There IS shame, though, in realizing you’ve been had and then doing nothing about it. What can you do? You can start by simply not believing him anymore. You don’t need to be loud about it. Just be true to yourself. You’ll know what to do from there. You’re an American. You’re a patriot. Don’t be taken in by Trump’s Big Lie any longer. Welcome back to the world of reason, as we approach the 250th anniversary of our great nation.