Nation at Fear

[McCamy Taylor]

We are not a nation at war (though the current administration uses war an excuse for many of its criminal activities).

We are a Nation at Fear. Even when it isn't color coded for us, we know what level it is at. For the past two weeks, officially it has been at Infra-red, what they would call 11 in "Spinal Tap". I can tell you the exact moment it was ramped up. That came when the Bush Administration told the Blair Administration that it was time to arrest to Liquid Terra Suspects. Not a day had passed without some report of some suspicious passenger being singled out on an airplane or some suspicious substance raising red flags at some airport screening. The arrests are shouted to us in big headlines as breaking news with lots of fanfare. The retractions the next day are buried in the small print.

Time out. None of these suspicious people has been a terra-ist. None of the substances has posed a danger. The Liquid Terra guys had no passports, no tickets. Half of them have been released for lack of evidence that the police in Great Britain could not gather, because the Bush Administration thought that it was more important to scare Americans on cue than to infiltrate a real terrorist cell.

Fear isn't waging an all air assault. On the southern border states, it is trying to scare us with stories like this one, http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/15359034.htm "Revolving Door" about how the latest suspect in the dreadful border murders may be a man who has frequently crossed the border and at one point was a US felon on parole. The picture of the bald young man staring boldly into the camera does not invite us to feel sympathy for the plight of the working young women who no choice but to live and work in this area plagued by a serial killer while both the Mexican and US authorities ignored them. It is meant to inspire fear. We are supposed to fear that another kind of threat is moving north over land and only the GOP with their great big Neuvo-Berlin Wall can stop it.

Fear can find you even in your home. The news no longer gives us inspiring stories of underdogs who prevail through perseverance or ordinary people who survive hardship with their spirits intact. It no longer presents problems along with possible solutions. That is the news of the New Deal and the Great Society. That is the news of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather Instead, everything is marketed like "Scrooge" from the movie "Scrooged".

Frank Cross: "(T)he people already wanna watch the show. That isn't good enough!They have got to be so scared to miss it, so terrified!"

So everything is about the death of a member of the majority demographic. Better yet, the deaths of a bunch of members of the majority demographic at the same time, through brutal, unexpected violence often at the hands of a minority demographic that is poorly understood or feared. When a perfect son or daughter is killed, the members of the press are there like vultures, because they know that scared moms and dads will tune in to watch for advice on how they can ensure that their beloved children do not meet the same sad fate. Rather than alleviating the parents' fear, the journalists ramp it up to 11 just like Bush and Cheney do. They are pushers, and they want to get their audience hooked on their product. Create the fear, offer a little relief, then push up the fear again. Keep the scared suckers coming back for more and more. You have to have addicts if you are going to run 24 hour news networks.

Eventually the audience will figure out that the middle aged woman who runs the daycare center probably does not run a pedophilia and pornography ring (Fear Drug of Choice c. late 1980's to early 1990) and then the fear peddlers change their wares. Be wary of the Rita Cosbys of the world. To you and I they may look like figures of fun, but they do real harm to real people.

The news of fear does not present a health threat as something that can be addressed and remedied. Everything becomes apocalyltic. AIDS is front page as long as it is an incurable disease of young white men. When it is a treatable disease of Africans and African-americans, it is no longer "sexy". The news of fear is reactive, not pro-active. It protrays citizens as helpless victims of the world in which they live who are assailed by storms and corporate giants and dueling armies as if these three are all the same thing. When Israeli missiles rained down upon Lebanese people the coverage was no different from that which we will get when the next hurricane hits the Gulf. There was no talk of how to end the suffering, only a detailed record of the tragedy and a big "Aren't you glad you're not here?"

[HockeyMom]

1. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself

[helderheid]

2. kickety

:kick:

[IWantAChange]

12. politics of fear

or is it politics of reprisal ever since Cheney and Rumsfeld got ran out of town on a rail during the Nixon debacle??

[SammyWinstonJack]

3. Kickin' it.

:kick:

[Chipper Chat]

4. Sorta-white Willie Horton.

Or a recycled Jose Padilla.

[Harry Monroe]

5. Remind me, what level are we at now???

I don't even pay attention to it anymore, except for those rare times when I tune in to the "Fake News Channel" and the level passes down on the scroll every few minutes to keep their minions fearful. It's a meaningless designation; have we ever been at the lowest level (green) since 9/11??

[CrispyQ]

6. A most excellent summation!

"The news of fear is reactive, not pro-active. It protrays citizens as helpless victims of the world in which they live who are assailed by storms and corporate giants and dueling armies as if these three are all the same thing."

:thumbsup:

"...officially it has been at Infra-red, what they would call 11 in 'Spinal Tap'." :rofl:

k&r

[DemonFighterLives]

7. Great Post!

Now go about your business- just keep the duct tape and plastic handy.
Be suspicious of everyone and everything.
They are going to need higher levels for when the sh*t comes down on dubbya.
:dem:

[glitch]

8. K & R this post so that everyone gets a chance to read it nt.

[civildisoBDence]

9. Fearmongering gives the neocons more power

But at the same time, the patience and long-range strategizing of bin Laden and his followers shouldn't be overlooked.

The shame of it is that DUHbya and his cabal have left our borders open and wasted most of our resources on Iraq, while the real threats simmer and the Muslim world grows to hate us more and more.

The Bush-hogs have made matters worse--they exploit fear for their own ends while at the same time putting us in a long range situation that is truly frightening.

News and commentary, left to right

[TheFriedPiper]

10. I'm not SCARED enough to vote Republican

We need to keep pushing this meme. Force the redneck insecure males that support Bush into feeling that a vote for the fear-mongering Republican party proves they are cowards.

[Protagoras]

11. Think we should start asking repugs what

Land of the brave is supposed to mean. Because it seems like we've become one of the most cowardly and paranoid nations on the planet. Just spent time in 3 different countries and not ONE of them appeared to think like we do. In one they ran a newsline that said America was the Nation of Insecurity.

Truer words were never written.

K/R

[McCamy Taylor]

13. Good one! "What Part of 'Home of the Brave' Dont You Understand?"

[BlueStorm]

14. We are in the Fear Age...

The Bush Adminstration had succeeded in producing an environment of fear. We have been stripped of our basic civil rights out of fear. It has been milked on the MSM and we have even turned on others out of fear. We are returning to an environment akin to that of the Cold War or we have already been there.

In November we need to vote for our reasonable minded Democratic congresspeople to restore balance and most importantly to get us out of the Fear Age.

Blue

[McCamy Taylor]

15. The Press and its (lack of proactive) coverage of election theft

may have something to do with the MSM's predilection for Shock Stories. Recall how much advertising was sold covering the debacle of Florida 2000. There were people who were warning before the fact that something was going on in Florida, like Greg Palast I believe, but no one in the news media would listen or give them a platform. Part of it may have been that they did not think that it would matter. However, the Florida 2000 story was big, big, big. So, when 2004 came around and there were lots of indications that Ohio was going to be the pivitol state and that even worse abuses of voters' rights were taking place there, you would have thought that someone besides the NAACP would be there.

One explanation is that the MSM was solidly in W.'s pocket. The other is that the MSM looked back on Florida 2000, "The Hanging Chad" fondly and thought to itself "Oh, boy! Kerry will contest the outcome, and we can have another media circus!" If you are trying to sell advertising time, which would you prefer, lots of shows about the subtleties of the Voting Rights Act which might end up averting a crisis? Or a situation in which all hell breaks loose? When Kerry did not contest anything, there was nothing for them to cover, though they kept looking in that general area, hard enough that by January a third of Americans ended up believing that the election had been stolen.

The only MSM news team back in fall 2004 that was taking a proactive approach to election theft was an old fashioned one, Dan Rather-Mary Mapes team from 60 Minutes. If they had not been lynched by a combo of Freepers and MSM types, their next show was going to be about how the state of Florida was using more Voting Right's Act violating methods in preparation for the 2004 presidential election. In contrast, the celebrated Olberman coverage of Ohio 2004 was entirely reactive. And if you will note, Countdown has had ZERO coverage of the issue of election fraud or E-vote problems (except for one brief mention of the fact that Diebold can be hacked with a screwdriver and a $25 connector and a few minutes) this election season. Old "I love the smell of U.S. mortar in Iraq. It smells like...energy independence" Lou Dobbs is doing more for the cause. It is almost as if Countdown is getting ready to make out like a bandit on the Shock Story, "Election 2006, How Did Karl Rove Steal Congress?"

Some would say that this is the kind of eye opener that Americans need. Let them see that they have completely lost everything, watch them flounder helplessly, let the USA dissolve into chaos with rioting in the streets. I suggest that it is better to walk Americans through the task of taking care of their own Democracy. Less photo opportunities, maybe. More satisfying, for sure.