If you have two or more pets, and one comes home from the vet with a wide plastic collar around its neck to keep it from bothering a wound, have you ever noticed how your other pets hiss or bark, or act viciously towards the poor animal you just brought home? I've seen it over and over again. The strange smells and appearance of your sick pet distresses your other animals, and they react like most animals do -- humans included -- they go on the attack.

In human terms, this is very similar to "kick him when he's down" behavior. Fear of "The Other" is a commonplace feature of animal behavior. Radical clerics like Pat Robertson have learned that they can derive power from their followers through stories that reinforce these base instincts. "If something bad happened to those dark-skinned people, it's their own fault."

I once worked with a very average-seeming fellow named Pete who confided in me that the best thing to do with all those poor people living on the floodplains of Bangladesh was simply to exterminate them, because they would always be getting sick, starving, drowning or some other calamity. In his mind, Pete thought that what would be best was to simply eliminate the problem by eliminating the people with the problem. Pete was just your average D.C.-area office worker, but he had genocidal aspirations. (Pete was an awful asshole in many other ways.)

Pol Pot, Pete and Pat and my miniature Pinscher all think the same way. I hope humanity can move along from this way of thinking before we have to see one more final, final solution.