Recycling
It is precisely the purpose of the public opiniongenerated by the press to make the public
incapable of judging,to insinuate into it the attitude
of someone irresponsible, uninformed
--Walter Benjamin
________________
Following are some of the fears du jour from his past:
- Quemoy
- Matsu
- Formosa
- Korea
- Berlin crisis
- Vietnam
- Beirut 1956
- Suez crisis
- Vietnam, redux
- Cuba
- Taiwan (recurring)
- Grenada / Nicaragua
- Panama Invasion
- Somalia
- Bosnia
- Gulf Wars I and II
- Afghanistan
During all of this we continued The Cold War. All of these situations were played as Vital to the National Interest, when they were simply diversionary events that were interchangeable. The baseline of all was fear based upon ignorance.
This ignorant fear is a formula that knocks the ball out of the park every time. However, at some point, we must stop our vulnerability, or risk residing in a miasma of national psychosis.
While the current darling of the fear-mongers -- worldwide Islamic extremist terrorism -- would seem to be all-encompassing, in fact it is a threat which is drawing us into an ever-shrinking event horizon.
Part II : Najibillah Zazi, and all he is not.
Labels: fear. PWOT, national psychoses, phony war on terror, war on terror
posted by rangeragainstwar at 8:35 PM
7 Comments:
Your list seems to be more about crisis than fear.
My list would look differently, like
yellow scare
communist scare
Sputnik shock
Domino theory
missile gap (supposed)
WMD scare
terror scare
Muslim scare
China scare
...
Sven,
All of these crisism were sold thru the use of fear.
Your point is well taken and ackowledged.
As always, it's nice to hearb from you.
jim
Lets not forget The current Black President Scare. LOL
Ranger Hazen,
I didn't include the 1/2 Black President scare b/c i'm still waiting to see how it'll play out.
I shure don't see the HOPE.
jim
fear, as every good propagandist from alcibiades on down knows, is a powerful and effective tool to use.
one of the things that makes it most effective is that for many folks the secondary emotion of fear is anger.
unfortunately the policy and law that springs from fear and anger is, for the most part, pretty fucked up. at least as fucked up as feeling scared and angry all the time.
i long for the wisdom of a lincolnesque someone to rise up and call forth "the better angels of our nature."
that's where the solutions to our problems live.
search them out and abide with them. it's a far better life.
MB,
Well-said. Fear is often the flip-side of anger, and powerful emotions they are, but that is not where the good life resides.
MB,
Just think about all the repressive, non-democratic despots that were supported and/or created by US interventions.
Examples include Somoza /Shah of Iran/Chaing/Diem.
Now look at the list of tyrants that we still support with US taxes.
jim
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