Deep Down Americans Are Just Afraid Of Being Killed...

[phrenzy]

That's really what it comes down to. I think many Americans have a silent (maybe even subconscious contact) with the Bush administration. Make us feel safe, and we will pretty much let you get away with anything you want. I think, deep down, many Americans are HAPPY about things like illegal wiretapping and exported torture.

So, as long as Americans are afraid, any issue other than 'saving our own ass' will come a distant second. Nevermind if they are actually in danger, if they feel they are (and the 9/11 imagery can easily make them feel that way) then they will go along with anything.

It is going to take an incident, a travesty so VISUALLY horrible that no American can turn away. Americans mindset will not change until a visual as powerful as 9/11 is imprinted in their brain, and that will be hard to do.

[PSPS]

1. No, I think it's "Deep Down Americans Are Just Cowards."

[RC]

2. Soft, tv addicted, ignorant of the rest of the world.

Reality challenged.

[lonestarnot]

13. woosers.

[mandyky]

30. No, Deep down Americans are bullies

It''s the whole might makes right crap.

[uppityperson]

3. deep down americans are just afraid

afraid of losing whatever they have. afraid of risking. afraid of being open and loving and caring and sharing. Not specifically anyone of us, but overall. Katrina imagery helped, but has dropped off now.

[phrenzy]

6. You are right...

About the Katrina imagery softening the poisonous imagery of 9/11 - But I'm afraid it's going to take something even worse to wake them up. Fear is a very very powerful thing.

[ingac70]

4. Anyone who thinks * makes us safe is a retard.....

Oh please, Dubya, protect me from Cat Stevens!! :sarcasm:

Americans aren't happy about torture and wiretapping, FACISTS are!

[Warren Stupidity]

5. We are cowards. Scaredy cats. Whusses.

It isn't even just fear of being killed. We are terrified of being inconvenienced. Half of us are shivering in church once a week on the off chance that the tooth fairy is going to be on our side and guide us to the winning lottery ticket.

[sendero]

7. He he..

... something like that :)

I actually had a coworker tell me once that he didn't really believe in Jesus, but that he went to church and acted like a Christian as an "insurance policy".

How do ya like that moron? :)

[Patchuli]

14. Some are. Some aren't.

And personally, I go to church every week to worship my God.

Like the saying by good old Ben Frank about "those who will sacrifice liberty for a little security deserve neither" or something like that. There's no wusses around here. I'd shame my WW2 hero vet Dad if I were to be that skeered...

[Clark2008]

35. More than half believe in God

Your tooth fairy analogy doesn't help me believe that liberals are allegedly tolerant.

[Warren Stupidity]

36. I'm not a liberal

And I am damned tired of pretending that adults believing in the tooth fairy is something I should tolerate by acting as if it is anything other than infantile behavior. Tooth fairy belief systems are symptomatic of the psychological problems of the american population, in my opinion of course, and are part of the set of avoidance mechanisms our mass media brainwashing has programmed into us so that we can be controlled and deluded by the elites.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. As H.L. Mencken said:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

[PassingFair]

17. Politics?

Are you SURE he wasn't talking about religion?

:)

[MODemocrat]

21. Yes, that's the way Hitler worked it

He kept people so scared, they had to obey and worship him.

[Militant_Left]

9. Why shouldn't they be?

Afterall, they are part of the racist opppresive machine bent on world domination. As long as they can live a lush lifestyle surrounded by people with the same skin color as them, they are happy...and everyone else can live a life as a slave in order to supply them with inexpensive products and high profit margins for the stocks they hold.

They may may know something is coming. And it won't be pretty when it gets here.

[seabeyond]

10. it was clear with the man shot on the plane. convinced me

when we found out he didnt say bomb, that it was what was preceived by the marshal, and the people yelled that it was ok, that the marshalls were protecting all by shoot to kill first and ask questions later. their fear of the possibility of what might have been was worth another persons life, in their view

[pretzel4gore]

11. most americans know nothing about bush

fact is, since before regan, the plan has been to drive down the number of those who use the vote.....the system exaggerates the number, but the entire rightwing stategy has been to get at least 1/2 of american electorate to not vote at all, then to secure a majority of the 50 percent who do bother....the premise of your op assumes that the big lie isn't a big lie, just a little lie, but the vote counters have been messing around for a long time, though the gopigs made it sop in 2k election and since. people do not chose that which harms their own kids' future, yet the us political system and the us mass media tries to say that we do- that just means that the con, ie the 'big lie' is being promulgated very skillfully...only a minor percentage watches the network news; even less watch the cable news; that shows how uninvolved the people are. This says bush is surviving purely by default

[Erika]

12. It's always amazed me that W's Christians are so scared to die

but they absolutely say they love God/Jesus and know heaven is utopia.

That's definitely schizoid to me.

[Bluebear]

15. I think it is an extremely valid observation. nt

[FloridaPat]

16. Only about 20% of the Americans started the Revolutionary War.

Very little of a population sees the original problem before it's too late.

[REDKING]

18. I have waited and waited to hear this.........

You are no better than me ,me no better than you,I watched as the second plane came in.
I live in Belfast,I know what I saw.I saw people dying.I did not feel good.
My firm belief is that they' whoever,they think they are..they are lying.
I feel bad because I cant change it..And I so want too.

[Just Me]

19. They want what they can't have,....everything they see on teevee.

They're also addicted to the misery of others cause it makes them feel better.

They also dig violence cause it makes them feel more alive than they do in a country where they are perpetually bombarded with everything they can't have.

That's what I think.

[MODemocrat]

20. I'm afraid of being killed by a tornado here in the Midwest, nothing else

I've heard so many people threaten their little children with: If you don't be a good little boy-girl, the boogie man is going to get you; this is how I relate it to Bush tactics of trying to put the fear in us.

[phrenzy]

22. Japanese Internment...

This fear motivation can be seen throughout history though. And it often leads the population to accept terrible things with a 'better safe than sorry' attitude. Japanese Internment is a great example. I would be willing to bet, that if Americans weren't so scared shitless of being attacked again after pearl harbor, they would never have stood for it. But, since the Ann Coulters of their day were winning the 'war of ideas', Roosevelt did it.

I bet, in lots of ways after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even the most gung-ho Americans had their bloodlust satisfied. Also, the Holocaust put things like Pearl Harbor in perspective as well, in that we were never fighting enemies on the ground in our own country and having families displaced because of bombing runs.

[caledesi]

23. I would change Americans to Republicans....of course they are

frightened and think they need "Big Daddy" to protect them from the "evildoers."

And the rest of us:

We are not cowards.
We cannot be told lie after lie from our "leader" and believe it.
We are familiar with fascism and how fear controls the population.
We do not hold party over country.
We don't have a "bumper sticker" mentality:
Freedome is on the march
Oceans don't protect us
Smoking guns and mushroom clouds
Wiretapping for our "security"...gee, isn't that what Communist rulers
said

edit: usual stuff

[Oeditpus Rex]

24. Not afraid — complacent

It's the old "As long as I've got mine" syndrome. Certainly, no one wants to die, especially at the hands of an "enemy." But I doubt many Americans really believe they'll ever be attacked; there just aren't that many likely targets.

What's more, I believe most people living outside the New York/Washington corridor harbored an unspoken relief after 9.11 — "Thank God it wasn't here."

We're all hard-wired with a protection hierarchy — our families, ourselves, our extended families and friends, et cetera. What happens to those we don't know isn't very high on the list. As long as we and those closest to us are okay and our lives aren't adversely affected, no big deal.

[sandnsea]

25. Except for the "we're kickin' ass" crowd

They don't give a shit about anything except swaggering around and yammerin' about killing things and being #1. They have absolutely nothing in their own lives to feel good about, so they ride the tailcoats of other people killing evildoers to prove their own manhood. And the women want one of them terrorist hating manly men too.

[Warren Stupidity]

37. The 'kickin' ass crowd' are the worst sort of cowards

They are almost universally for somebody else kicking ass, anybody but them. I know quite a few kids who have enlisted and gone to fight, and almost without exception none of them could be described as part of the 'kickin' ass crowd', instead to a person they simply viewed it as a civic obligation, as their duty. (They also generally didn't have much else to do with their lives due to lack of real opportunities, but that is another story.)

[Skidmore]

26. Americans are afraid of dying, period. They are very risk-averse.

America is the only culture I've ever been in that is totally obsessed with every aspect of life being safe. It is the only culture I've ever been in that is obsessed with perpetual youth and does not have some respect for maturity and age. Americans seem to believe that they are somehow entitled to charmed existences. These have become the reason for living for the upper class and for the middle class that seeks to emulate the upper class. Reality is that people get sick, grow old, and die, sometimes at the hands of others and for horrible causes. It is a reality that is understood in most of the world. But it is our obsession with youth, beauty, and safety that has made us vulnerable because we fear life itself.

[EFerrari]

27. What was Katrina?

:(

[annabanana]

28. EXACTLY!

If that imagery wasn't enough to shake off the fog, it's hard to imagine what would. Check out the "Big Lie" threads in GD: Politics. There is a psychological trap that has been strung around the neck of America's conscience.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

29. Hmm...

I think many Americans have a silent (maybe even subconscious contact) with the Bush administration. Make us feel safe, and we will pretty much let you get away with anything you want. I think, deep down, many Americans are HAPPY about things like illegal wiretapping and exported torture.

I agree wholeheartedly. Even though many people (and certainly many old-school conservatives would be included) feel uncomfortable about domestic spying, they are willing to put their unease aside for exactly the reasons you describe. This worries me, because I'm not sure that making a stink about the legality of warrantless wiretaps is the best political strategy for our party, regardless of its legal correctness.


It is going to take an incident, a travesty so VISUALLY horrible that no American can turn away. Americans mindset will not change until a visual as powerful as 9/11 is imprinted in their brain, and that will be hard to do.

Well, hurricane Katrina may fit that bill to some extent, though if the Democrats do as bad a job with that as they have with everything else, there's really not much hope.

[tom_paine]

31. Bottom Line: Fear works...almost always, and Americans are NOT special

in any way. It is only that one generation of Founding Fathers (and eprhaps those who fought in the Civil War) that were different in any way from the thousands of generations of humans and hominids that preceeded us.

I am now convinced that even America's assistance in the triumph over Hitler and the original Bushevism can largely be traced to those two groupds of people and the Constitutional Ethics they passed down the generation that allowed, at crucial points, for the forces of Liberty to outnumber the forces of Tyranny in this country.

Now, that trick of fate has ended and all the lessons of the passed have been purposefully erased or placed out of bounds by the Bushevik Political Correctness. Now, people who want (or even if they have know idea what it is they are wanting, support blindly) Tyranny (and the attendant illusion of safety) outnumber those who support Liberty.

And once the Constitution is finished being dismantled by the Busheviks and the last genetartion raised in Free America grow old and die, we will see just how much the New Amerika will resemble Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

Because I think it is almost certain that it will only be a matter of degree.

[laruemtt]

32. doesn't make sense, does it,

at least with the so-called religious ones who supposedly can't wait to be reunited with their god - strange they're so afraid of dying. guess there's a disconnect going on in them somewhere.... :crazy:

[ProfessorGAC]

33. And Yet, The Worst Attack On The Mainland Happened On His Watch

I've never been able wrap around that thought. He makes people feel safer because they're afraid of the terrorists, but the worst casualty count ever happpened while he was president. Why would anybody think that the guy who was in charge when it happened is the guy to make us safe? That is just illogical.
The Professor

[Strong Atheist]

34. Agreed. nt.