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It's so much easier to control people when you can present them with scapegoats and easy targets as to what's wrong with the world.
This is why I think Shintoism kicks ass: they believe in all sorts of wild stuff, still go to temples to worship, but not once, ever, have they gone on the war path for anything based on that religion. No war was ever started because something in a book told the people who subscribe to Shinto to go kill The Unbelievers, Shinto never suggests that it is more correct than other beliefs, and they have rather nice ideas that there should be a nice balance between people and nature.
Yesterday I ran into something that was a little frightening: two of my co-workers, who I always considered to be the nicest of people (have wonderful families, do charity work, help out others that they don't even know, not racist in any way, considered almost family, etc) turned into something scary while enjoying a discussion over lunch. All it took was for someone to mention Disney, the other mentions Gay Day, and all of a sudden I'm hearing the most awful, uneducated hate that is usually reserved for members of the Klan being interviewed on Springer. I was really taken aback by this display and I'm still hoping it has more to do with the current media atmosphere than the actual feelings of the people I work with.
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