A question of fear: Why so damned much in America?***

[JanMichael]

DOUBLE EDIT: Let's forget about the USSR, apparently I'm an anomoly, bad example.

(*)EDIT: I meant to see if you "Feared" the Soviet Union and consequentially felt safer with the dissolution especially with what's happened to the World, and nuclear weapons, since then. Sorry for the confusiion! The point being that my life wasn't spent cowering from potential Red operatives in Northern Colorado. Same with that Saddam MoFu.

Anyway...

I only ask this because of the incessant "Don't you feel safer with Saddam gone?" comments on tv, radio, etcetera. How many of you were/are actually scared of Saddam, or terrorism in general? In such a way that your life was altered or troubled by that fear? I don't know, did you take alternate routes home from work to confuse terrorists? By the way the media describes us one might gather that Americans are quite the nervous nellies. Scared of our own shadows even, wouldn't that explain the blind acceptance of the Patriot Act and belligerant foreign policies? Fear has a way of making people less concerned with established order, relationships, laws, and conventions. Checking under every bed for those scary monsters has become a national pastime...At least a conservative pastime. Could it be that conservatives/fascists are naturally more easily terrified that liberals/progressives?

Perhaps I'm just obtuse but the boogey man doesn't have much effect on me. Neither does a sensationalist media.

How about you? Do you scare easy?

[SlavesandBulldozers]

1. Yeah, i do

That's why I'm glad the U.S. is winning the war against drugs. Because I don't want drugs to come here and rape my family and convert me to communism.

[Sir_Shrek]

2. Never really experienced the USSR

I'm not old enough to have really be cognizant of what it was, except through history. I've heard plenty of stories about the Cuban Missile Crisis and the "hide under your school desk" drills, but that's about it.

[Caution]

3. Just curious how old you are?

EDIT: spelling
I think that anyone over the age of 27 or so can probably honestly say that yes they feel safer with the USSR gone. Growing up in the 80's the spectre of nuclear war was always there and that spectre has all but disappeared from popular culture. Certainly as long as nuclear weapons exist it could happen, but Reagan and his gang worked hard to make sure that we as children were terrified of the possibility that the commies would destroy the world. (and obviously this rhetoric was active well before Raygun as well). That said my younger brother and sister really have no memory of fear of nuclear war (they are 24 and 22 respectively).

Do i feel any safer with Hussein out of power? The very thought makes me laugh. I don't knwo of anyone who seriously could say that they felt threatened by Saddam Hussein in even remotely the same way the country feared the USSR.

[JanMichael]

6. 35. Sorry, I never "Feared" the USSR.

And the world is a much more dangerous place now than then.

[DoYouEverWonder]

22. I grew up in NYC

During the 50's many apartments still had black out shades. In the early 60's they put in air raid shelters in the basements of all the apartment buildings. Growing up there, you always knew that if there was a nuclear war between the USSR and the USA, that you lived at ground zero. Kiss your ass good buy, you won't even know what happened.

In comparison, Saddam is a joke, and your average terrorist may be able to pull off a few spectacular events, but they will never be able to destroy the whole world or anything like that. Has a matter of fact, climate change will probably get us before al Qaeda will.

[Bandit]

29. "honestly say that yes they feel safer with the USSR gone."

Actually I feel way less safe now because all those Nukes the Soviets had are now in unstable countries and subject to falling into the wrong hands. When the Soviet Union was in place things were well in hand. I didn't agree with some of their world views but they had a strong military and kept track of their weaponry. They kind of kept a check on the rest of the world including the USA and now with them gone people like the Bush* Cabal have become emboldened to the point of world conquest which again makes us far less safe.

[PretzelWarrior]

4. Didn't you see "Red Dawn"? Of course I was scared of USSR

same with how I felt after watching "The Day After", "Threads", and "World War III" with Rock Hudson and the guy from Starsky and Hutch.

Wait a minute...those were all produced by the USA to give us an irrational fear of a peasant nation whose stockpile of nukes matched our own stockpile of nukes.

I think Bush felt safer back then because the world was bipolar with good/evil. Good NATO. Bad Warsaw Pact. We all know the line. Turns out...there were a lot of good Russians and part of their downfall came from the goodness and vision of a GREAT Russian with 10 times more brains than Bush or Reagan--Gorbachev.

Russia was a genuine threat. They technically still are with so much fissile material unaccounted for. I think Saddam was WAAAYYYYYY down the list of countries making US an unsafe country, but then so do most thinking people here and around the world.

THe question is...how do we stop these maniacs? I'm not sure winning an election will get it done.

[Newsjock]

10. "Threads"

Actually, "Threads" was a British production that was designed to show the horrors of nuclear war started by any side. It was chillingly effective because it largely didn't resort to the over-reaching special effects that "The Day After" et al. used. If I remember correctly, "Threads" never even mentioned the Soviets, the U.S., or anyone else.

"Threads" -- which I still have on VHS from the one night that TBS showed it -- was the most chilling of the lot of the Bomb Genre, and it's the one film of the genre that I still can't bear to go back and watch again.

[PretzelWarrior]

16. I'm glad you remember that one. I would love to see it again.

There was another that was out of this world called "Special Bulletin" or some such thing. That one was really good for OUR times because it was about these news reporters covering terrorists who had a nuclear device on a boat in the harbor of Charleston, SC. Anyway, the climax scared the sh!t out of me because the bomb was detonated and the whole Charleston area was obliterated. The news report of course went dead...and I thought--why won't this happen at some point? It's just a matter of time.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

5. The USSR-like Yugoslavia-repressed a lot of ethnic and nationalist

animosity. I think the world is more dangerous now-especially Central Asia. Some of those nations fund, train and harbor terrorists. Many former Soviet republics have repressive givernments and economically and socially their inhabitants are worse off. I am not defending the USSR-I just think it will be years before that part of the world stabilizes-if ever.

[JanMichael]

7. It was just an example. The main point was irrational fear.

Perhaps I shouldn't have used the USSR. While I enjoyed Red Dawn, as a teen, it didn't make me fear the Soviet Union.

As to the MAD issue? If it happened it happened and I felt we'd both be responsible. Again no real fear of the USSR. Maybe concern with a situation but not "Fear" of them.

[maxsolomon]

8. i was always more scared of a dr. stangelove scenario

i'm 40, so that dates me.

the cold war seemed like a big hand of poker where both sides were only holding pairs. they were just bluffing, with no real intention of ever using the dang things.

the thing that made me worried is that those with their fingers on the buttons were paranoid idealogues. meaning, senile reagan scared the fuck out of me. he believed his own bullshit.

so does bush, but he doesn't have alzheimers as an excuse. he really is stupid, in a way. like a blind man in a room full of deaf people, actually. he can't see that no one is listening.

[Wonco_the_Sane]

9. Yes the world is safer without the USSR

No the world is not safer with Saddam gone. Although, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are probably safer to an extent. America wasn't going to be attacked by Iraq. Unless you believe their old "propaganda minister", "We are winning the war!! We have taken New Jersey!!" (sorry) lol

[JanMichael]

11. Perhaps. My point though is about personal Fear.

You didn't "Fear" the USSR did you? As I've said, I was concerned with the stand-off but I didn't fear that nation.

As too Saddam it seems to me that some people were actually looking under their bed at night...

[Wonco_the_Sane]

13. I did actually

I was born in 72' and liked and believed Reagan. My dad was in the Air Force and I knew we always lived on or near a potential target. Reagan seemed grandfatherly and kind growing up in a houseful of Republicans.

College (Political Science), and the destruction of communism is what it took for me to see what was going on. (Clinton helped) :)

[sweetheart]

12. I grew up in fear of a nuclear war

.. not really the soviet union... and i came to realize many years later the extent of the lie, and that that nuclear war threat was mostly a deliberate propaganda tactic to scare the american public, paid for by taxpayers.

Fear is perhaps not the right word, but in my young adulthood, i was a morbid SOB believing constantly that the world was about to be vaporized, and that it was pointless to strive to achieve anything in life as we were only a short time from the terminator's "judgement day". I see it now, in hindsight as a sort of mental illness inflicted upon the public en-masse by the media where the soviet union was used to reflect the destructive military imperialism of our own nuclear bullshit military fucks.

I'd like to put the whole lot of the bastards to created the cold war (and as it turns out, the same bastards behind PNAC) behind bars on a public crimes trial to deceive and destroy the lives of millions of americans. They should be sued for all their possessions and put in prison.

It is one thing to point to a legitimate threat, and quite another to systematically use fear to whip a generation of children in to submission... the latter is a heinous crime.

[Redneck Socialist]

14. I guess I would have to say yes.

Sure I was being constantly bombarded with anti soviet propaganda, but I pretty much assumed that nuclear war was inevitable. The dissolution of the soviet union capped by the fall of the Berlin wall were remarkable earth changing events. For those of us of that era the evil of the soviets was pretty much a given. I never in a million years expected the Berlin wall to come down short of war. I amazed then and still am.

Comparing Saddam with the Soviet Union is comparing apples and elephants. They are so far apart as to be almost incomparable. The soviets had the very real capability to destroy the US. Saddam never had the capacity to threaten much less destroy us.

Now using (or creating) an enemy for propaganda purposes in order to control the population is another subject all together. BushCo. is certainly using "the terrorist threat" as a tool to advance his evil agenda.

[tom_paine]

15. I feared the USSR, when looking at their policies, their methods, the KGB

Enforced wealth equality, in my opinion, is as dangerous and unfair (and usually unattainable) as tremendous wealth disparity, particularly when one considers that, in the old Soviet Union, there wee at least as many wealth strata, practically speaking, as in America if not more.

Also, the Soviets were brutal oppressors and stiflers of Liberty. I have spoken to Russian emigres personally. Also, there can be little question that both we and they were playing geopolitical chess during the Cold War and both of us did terrible things and supported terrible people. It certainly appeared as if they wanted to destroy us and our way of life (or more accurately, the relatively free if somewhat impefect lifestyle of the Old American Republic).

Imagine my surprise when we defeated the Soviet Union (or it collapsed on it's own...whatever) only to see us becoming more like it on so many levels in it's absence.

Saddam never scared me because I was informed on the topic, unlike the vast majority of Imperial Amerikan Subjects.

And I'm far more nervous about dying in the Reichsmarschall Ashcroft Memorial Re-Education and Re-Christianization Camps in the Arizona Desert than I am of dying in any terrorist attack.

I believe the Soviet Union was a very real threat. I also believe that we have been affected by their absence more than we realize in what has happened in Amerika without the Soviet Tyranny to point to as it applies to how we shouldn't be.

In other words, without the Soviet Union, Imperial Amerika is now "free" to become a Soviet-style Tyranny, complete with ineffectual, lying State-Controlled Media and of course, the New Amerikan Politikal Korrectness.

[Silverhair]

17. Yes, I do feel safer. I no longer worry about massive nuclear war.

Yeah, some idiot group may get a few nukes and use them, but the threat of a planet destroying nuclear war is removed. Remember Carl Sagan talking about nuclear winter?

[economic justice]

18. Safer without USSR? YES....Safer without Saddam? NO. <eom>

[sendero]

19. The prospect ....

... of mutually assured destructive atomic warfare, once I really understood it, never really scared me.

But back in the 60's things weren't so cut and dried. I think there was reason to be concerned then.

[Tansy_Gold]

20. As one who was old enough to understand the Cold War. . . .

. . . . at the time it was being waged, my perspective:

I went through the under your desk drills and at the age of 9 or 10, I thought they were stupid. I'm talking 1958, 1959, thereabouts. Grade school. I had been through a couple of bad tornadoes and knew the kind of damage they did, and I knew from all the cold war fear literature (Weekly Reader versions) that an atomic bomb was considerably more destructive than a tornado. Hiding under a desk wasn't going to save anyone from a bad storm, so it was likely not to provide much safety from a nuclear attack.

Throughout the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan eras, the USSR was painted as The Great Enemy. Reagan ratcheted up the rhetoric, but the threats were always there. I remember when Castro came to power, I remember Bay of Pigs, I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, the raising of the Berlin Wall, and so on. I think I was about 12 or 13 when I saw the movie "Fail-Safe," where the president authorizes the use of nuclear weapons even though he knows his own wife will die. As you can see, that was the deepest impression the film made on me -- I understood that positions of power came with truly awesome responsibilities and you shouldn't volunteer for that kind of power without understanding that it might have a high price.

Because my entire family was Republican, I grew up as a Republican. Not a rightwing nutcase, but certainly what would have been called a "fiscal conservative." But at the same time, I questioned a lot of the more conservative social policies. HOWEVER, the major issue that stuck out, at least in my mind, was this whole thing about the communists/Russians/USSR. I did go along with that aspect of the Republican agenda, because I didn't see any reason to question it. They were the bad guys.

In spite of that, I did not live in fear. Not as a child, not as a teen-ager, not as a young adult, and not as an adult in the 1980s under Reagan and dealing with all the Brezhnev/Kosygin saber-rattling.

I don't think it's possible to sustain an attitude of fear for very long without reinforcement. We know there are threats from all kinds of dangers, but we go ahead and live our lives pretty much the same day to day. Could we have a fatal car accident on the way home from work? Yep, but we drive home anyway. Could we be caught in the crossfire of a road rage shooting? Yep, but we get on the freeways anyway. Could our plane develop engine trouble and drop out of the sky? Yep, but we plan the trip to Chicago for our mother's 75th birthday party anyway.

The constant drumbeat of terror-terror-terror-threat-threat-danger-war-catastrophe will eventually take a toll. But more important than the long term effect will be the short term effect, which is to condition us to react in a prescribed manner if/when the terror-threat-danger becomes real. Even as we spend time -- and obviously I'm as guilty as anyone -- discussing the viability of these threats and dangers, we are giving them reinforcement in our minds.

I think the real question, JanMichael, ought to be "What specific changes have you made in your life as a response to fear of a terrorist attack? Have you stockpiled antibiotics in case someone drops anthrax spores all over the place? Have you built a fall-out shelter in case a rogue terrorist groups unleases a bunch of dirty bombs? Have you had yourself sterilized so you won't leave any children to live in a world of nuclear winter?"

To live without any fear is foolish. If we don't fear things, we can act in ways that put ourselves and others at unacceptable risk. Do we fear HIV/AIDS enough to practice safe sex? I think most of us do. Do we fear imprisonment enough not to go around knocking off all the people we don't like? Probably. Do we fear food poisoning enough to store our food wisely? But these are rational fears, based on rational knowledge and experience.

To me, based on 55 years of life in these United States, fear of terrorism, of Saddam Hussein, of al-Qaida and bin Laden and so on is a waste of energy. Irrational fear won't stop the events from happening. We have little to no control over them.

On the other hand, I do fear the policies of the bushies. I fear they will lead to widespread misery in this country and around the world. I fear that if left unchecked, these policies could lead to violent revolution. However, there are at least some things I can do in response to these fears. I can work to register and get out voters who will overturn this illegal and immoral regime. And if that fails, I can resist, or even join a revolt.

So, we'll see.

But, to answer your original question, no, I never lived in abject fear of the irrational, nor have I changed my lifestyle in response to it. I take shelter when there are storm warnings, but I don't cower under the bed when the sun is shining.

Peace,

Tansy Gold

[BigDaddyLove]

21. I just think it has to do with.........

everyone watching what happened on 9/11.

There is some truth to the idea that prior to that happening we thought that something like it couldn't happen here; sadly though it has been used by this administration dishonestly and cynically to point to and say "look, look THEY can STILL get you, and only WE can protect you".

[Tansy_Gold]

24. exploiting a moment of fear to create a climate of fear

On the morning of 9/11/01, I turned on CNN when only one tower was burning. I watched as the second plane hit, and I watched as the first tower disappeared in an explosion of dust and smoke. Aaron Brown was semi-hysterical asking "What's going on? We can't see anything. what's happened to the first tower?"

I live just outside Phoenix, Arizona. I knew that the WTC had been hit by two hijacked planes. Within a short space of time, I knew there had beenfour planes hijacked, one crashed into the Pentagon, one crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

At approximately 9:30 AZ time (12:30 NYC time), I got in my truck and drove into Phoenix to my class at ASU West. In class, we watched further CNN coverage of the events.

From that day, there have been no further terrorist attacks in the U.S. We had gone through all the Y2K fears, the OKC bombing, the Olympic bombing, numerous bombings of Planned Parenthood offices, the Unabomber, and so on. We had even gone through the terrorist attacks of November and December 2000 when a group of thugs overturned our government. But we got over it all. No one mined those events to create a climate of fear.

But what the bushies have done since 9/11 is to cloak everything in fear, to use that fear to justify all the truly horrible things they've done, from Patriot Act to tax cuts to Code Maroon/Moran/Moron.

FDR said it best -- We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

and -- I would add -- the fearmongers.

Tansy Gold, the (usually) fearless

[BigDaddyLove]

31. I don't know if all of the 'attacks' you listed.........

even if you combine them, even come close to the desruction that 9/11 caused, and further I don't see what's wrong with people 'fearing' something like that.

[LeahMira]

23. About the only thing that scares me...

... is when I think of some of the times that I have treated someone else less well than I should have (or even downright rotten!)

I think that is what scares a lot of Americans also. Thinking, for instance, about all the rotten things they've said about and done to people who are homosexual, they're scared silly that if those people ever get any power they'll turn around and give some of that rotten treatment right back to the ones who dished it out in the first place.

Funny, but if you are just "looking out for number one" you tend to see everyone else as that way also.

[Cleita]

25. There is that point of the red menace which

was held over me and others my age for about half our lives. I mean there were the 'duck and cover' drills in school and all this civil defense BS that the government propagandized with films, brochures and regular hype from the media to BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID OF ALL THOSE NASTY COMMIES. I remember going with a friend while still in grade school on a civilian watch duty looking for enemy airplanes that could be coming over the horizon to drop nukes on us.

It was all a caculated plan to keep the population hating our cold war enemy, the Soviets, a pack of lies to make the population believe they could survive a nuclear attack if they followed the instructions their government gave them. Of course you trust your government because we are supposedly a democracy and they would never lead you down the primrose path now and lie to you, would they?

So now the Busheviks have resurrected this government by fear by using the horrendous attacks to the WTC to further their own plans for world domination. If it worked during the cold war and kept the population patriotic and not demanding too much while they pocketed taxpayers money, why won't it work again?

[bobbieinok]

26. I really don't remember 'duck and cover'

although I'm the right age.

I DO remember when Stalin died. It was like a great weight disappeared. None of the later USSR leaders was ever as scary.

[Cleita]

27. When I was in the sixth grade, we were shown a

civil defense film that was about how to survive a nuclear bomb. First you had to see the bright flash from the bomb. (Then they showed the mushroom cloud filmed of nuke tests in Nevada.) You were told to cover your head and arms with your sweater or jacket while diving under your school desk into a fetal or frog position. This was supposed to protect you from radiation. After things seemed to quiet down, then you could get up and look for shelter. We had to practice these drills along with fire drills when I was in school. Finally some saner head prevailed and the drills stopped. Teachers and parents realized if you saw that flash you were a goner.

[randr]

28. The Fright Wing Party is in control

[indepat]

30. We are taught to hate and we are taught to fear

[Nay]

32. Personally, I think Americans need to get a grip.

But it helps the * administration if everyone is kept cowering in fear, thus the media questions about if we feel safer, etc.

Face it, everyone, we're gonna die someday. And it may even be tomorrow in a high-rise building. To accept this doesn't mean we ignore safety concerns or don't try to protect ourselves, but it DOES mean we need to make rational decisions, not fear-based ones. Haven't seen much of that in the States yet.

[nostamj]

33. "Do you scare easy?" Hell No!

well, unless it's creepy bugs or snakes or really gruesome movies.

but 'terror'?? HELL no.

i was on the subway and back in Manhattan on 9/12

this fearmongering is part of the BushCo Trifecta:

HATE, FEAR & IGNORANCE

keep the people afraid, direct their hatred of the people they're told to fear and keep them ignorant about the truth (or lack thereof) in items one and two

[9215]

34. Ignorance and fear go hand in hand

and we have plenty of the former to feed the latter.

[NashVegas]

35. "Fear Loves This Place"

Song title by Julian Cope, very appropriate.

We fear because we are the wealthiest country in the world, we have the most to lose.