It’s a word we hear quite often these days. Fear of terrorism. Fear of losing a job. Fear of losing one’s health insurance. Fear, fear, fear. But just how real is this fear of ours? Are we afraid because we just are? Or are we afraid because we’ve been told to be afraid? I doubt anyone would disagree that the use of fear as a means to sway people’s minds is as powerful as any. And that both sides of American politics are guilty of using it is without debate.
First we have to acknowledge that fear is as natural and healthy an instinct as any. It’s what causes us to avoid danger. Without it there would be nothing to stop us from doing things like walking headlong over a cliff or sticking our hand into a fire. Even babies barely able to crawl will recoil from the edge of a drop off. But we humans are imaginative creatures. And I’m quite sure it coincided with the emergence of language. And that would be the use of fear to manipulate and control others. The problem is that the use of fear to convince people to accept change is a double edged sword.
It starts out early in life. “Don’t run into the street because you could get hit by a car.” I can’t imagine a single American kid who didn’t hear that warning in some form or another. But then it gets more complicated. “Don’t have unprotected sex because you could get a venereal disease or an unwanted pregnancy.” Good advice for anyone, right? Not according to some. Some fear that if we teach kids anything about sex it means we are saying that it’s ok for them to have sex. Some go so far as to believe that sex education in any form amounts to “encouraging” kids to have sex.
The former deals with the reality that kids, teenagers are having sex whether we adults think they should or not. And facing that reality feel a responsibility to provide information that will hopefully avoid the problems described above. This is what I call a healthy fear. The latter approach seems to believe in a fantasy world where all you have to do is teach abstinence and voila… all the teenagers magically stop having sex. Their fear is based on the prejudice that comes from the modern but mistaken Christian axiom that sin should be legislated. This is what I call an unhealthy fear. It originates in the belief some Christians have that says “because I call myself Christian, it means God is on my side.”
But the most dangerous use of fear is when it is based on lies and ignorance. And while I’ll acknowledge the Left has been guilty of crossing that line from time to time. The practice of fear mongering based on premeditated lies and the exploitation of the most ignorant among us is part and parcel of the Right’s political play book. And to be honest they have no other choice. If they were to base their argument solely on their real agenda, defend the status quo for the wealthiest 10% of the population, they wouldn’t get elected dog catcher. Their only choice is to work of up enough of the voters with bogus issues that incite fear and anger. And the proof is in the pudding folks. Our economy nearly fell apart and is struggling to it’s feet only because the American people bailed it out… why? Because an era of Republican dominance starting with Reagan and ending with Bush 43 deregulated and skewed the rules in favor of who? The wealthiest 10%. Our health care system is approaching collapse… why? Because of 60 years of unbridled opposition to any reform. And why was that? Because they were protecting the status quo for the health insurance industry which is owned by who? The wealthiest 10%. Under a Republican President our response to a criminal act of terrorism was 2 wars that cost our nation over 5,000 American lives with tens of thousands wounded and hundreds of billions of dollars that went to who? The wealthiest 10%.
Franklin Roosevelt said fear was the only thing TO fear. President Obama said our purpose wasn’t to fear the future, but to shape it. Fear of a real danger is healthy. Fear of the imagined or the unknown is not. And what the Republicans are doing is peddling fear of the unknown. And that unknown is the unavoidable unknown aspect of change. Of course there is a measure of the unknown when it comes to embracing change. But to be as afraid of it as the Republicans seem to be is unhealthy and their methods need to be rejected.
*************
Devin Barber, Politics Correspondent
Devin’s column, “Left Of The Right” published weekly or more to Gather Essentials: Politics is a Blue Collar Democrats take on current political news.
Devin was raised by proud Roosevelt Democrats. Being the son of parents counted among the throng of Americans displaced by the Great Depression has given Devin a deep rooted passion for causes dealing with the poor and the working class.
You can find all of Devin’s columns at LEFT OF THE RIGHT
You can keep up with Devin’s postings and his Gather activity by joining his Gather network. Just click here: Devin Barber and then select the orange “Connect” button on the left-hand side of the page.
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Comments: 75
Devin she needs us more than we need her--take comfort.
You know that what you said is untrue. What would the Democrats gain from everyone relying on the government? Nothing. There would be no tax money, there would be no wealthy contributors to their campaigns, there would be a failed economy making everyone poor.
The Republicans have money to gain from the rich in exchange for favoring the rich in legislation and administration. That is obvious to anyone. What you should notice is that the Democrats also favor the rich because the rich also contribute to their campaigns. Both parties favor the rich. The difference is that the Democrats' ideology favors giving a safety net to the poor while the Republican's ideology does not. The Democrats' ideology favors change for the better while the Republican's ideology favors no change to preserve the present state.
Devin,
Perhaps your definition of success is what divides liberals and conservatives?
"Democrats are really socialists and they want everyone relying on the government." A concern for the social welfare does not equal socialism. Anyone who had a heart would want to help a deserving neighbor or friend that they knew was having difficulties in their lives. Democrats believe that the government can and should step in to help such people because it advances the well-being of all of us. It's not that they "want everyone to rely on the government", it's that they want a resource that everyone can rely on, and that such a resource is best supplied by an objective agency such as the government.
"..the czars that Obama is collecting..." The use of "czars" (even the term) started under Reagan.
How the heck can anybody tell? There has never been a country with a socialist economy. A lot of countries have incorporated socialist features in their economies, including the US. No country has ever had a "pure" economy of any flavor. There have always been elements of state control, monopoly, and other things.
Spare me your manufactured outrage. You haven't lost any of your liberties except your freedom to think for yourself -- and you gave that one away.
Report Emphasizes Shortfall in Medicare
[excerpted from] Washington Post
By Jonathan Weisman Staff Writer
Thursday, March 24, 2005; Page A01
The two independent trustees overseeing Social Security and Medicare broke with the Bush administration's trustees yesterday, saying Medicare's financial problems far exceed Social Security's and are in urgent need of attention.
Republican Thomas R. Saving and Democrat John L. Palmer said Social Security's condition has changed little since they joined the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees in 2000. But in the trustees' report released yesterday, they wrote that Medicare's prospects have "deteriorated dramatically" with rising medical costs and the addition in 2003 of a prescription drug benefit.
...
"The financial outlook for Social Security has improved marginally since 2000," wrote Saving and Palmer. "In sharp contrast, Medicare's financial outlook has deteriorated dramatically over the past five years and is now much worse that Social Security's."
There is a SOLID Democratic MAJORITY in both houses.. as stupid as the right has been recently THIS you can't blame on them. The Democrats could pass ANY legislation Tomorrow if they would band together. So.. why are you trotting out that old sad excuse?
Larry;
maybe, but since the CURRENT system is already running FAR into the red, a certain "FEAR" on the ability of ANY American government to "change" things for the better is certainly justified.
>>>>
Devin Repubs have not changed much since the Civil war--the same antebellum attitudes and behaviors remain strong and letting go for a minute to a Democrat and not just any Democrat but a POTUS of color....well that just shakes them to their core. They will NEVER come around to any idea or concept he introduces.
The Party of NO is what they will remain.
No seat at the table
No support given
No ground yielded
No High speed rail---voting now on the floor
No reinvestments in America
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
Democrats wan this Nation to prosper and grow itself out of the quick sand we were in for the past eight years.
Yes!Yes!Yes!Yes!Yes!Yes!Yes!Yes!Yes!Yes!Yes!Yes!Yes!Yes!
No respect for the institutions and offices of the American government.
No quarter given to those they have identified as their opponents.
No stone unturned when it comes to levelling real or imagined accusations.
No sense of decorum or decency.
No regard of any kind for the feelings of others.
No acknowledgement of error, inaccuracy, or wrong-doing.
What are you talking about here, don't you know they don't make mistakes. It's just the rest of the worlds perception of mistakes being made.
>>>
More proof that Reform is mandatory and NOW!
to be clear I am UNINSURED and YEARS from getting medicare.
After all like no other country on Earth, money is proof of goodness in America. In Europe, might used to make right, the trial by ordeal where if you could beat or kill the leader of the tribe God had made it so and appointed you, the stronger as Caesar, Tsar, Kaiser, King, whatever.
In America we have a complex and convoluted relationship with merit as it relates to money. We do not have a class system, but we also do not differentiate, at least very well, between people who earned their money, and people who scammed their money or inherited it.
We dislike people who inherit their money because we do no think they are superior, but we are not critical or deep looking either. George Bush played this aspect to the American people by running for President based on having been a business man, CEO, twice. Had we bothered to look (which I did back in 1999) the suspicious and un-American, privileged background of "W" would have turned many Americans off.
This convoluted way to seeing the world and applying different American yardsticks in different situations depending on what we want to justify to ourselves has been measured by psychologists and bottled up for marketing firms and turned like a machine gun on the American people to mow down any sense or real democracy of self-determination and to instead shift the responsible decision making to our corporations.
Our fear, at least my fear, is based on our inability to understand of have any way to look and discuss this dynamic in a productive context. How many people understand the decisions being made in the Supreme Court right now about the right to free speech by corporations, and their "personhood" under the law.
My fear is based on the fact that the unregulated war between nations that is carried about economically between corporations seems to always lead to the view of average people are things, either resources or soldiers with only economic value to be used strategically to the maximum extent possible. The utililty of people is based on how strongly we imbue ourselves with "human" values. If corporations can speak louder and have more power than people, our own images of ourselves will be set and manipulated in movies and law to reduce our self-determination. That is scary to me.
and why did you HAVE to "look" at 'W'??? because the media is on EVERYBODY's pocket.
That is not the trend unless you only take corporations into account. I think the media is corporately consolidated now, most main media outlets are owned by a defense contractor in some way.
The MBA society is removing any other means of livelihood from the country besides being reduced to a cog in a corporate factory. As doctors have moved from independent practice/business owners to corporate employees their job satisfaction has dropped hugely. When people are not happy, they tend to displace their motivation to just getting more money and playing political games in a corrupt system.
We are removing any sign or use for intelligence in our political system leaving the design of our culture up to corporations, for their own poliical ends and figuring our ways to confuse and manipulate people, and then we wonder why we are falling and need to import everything from talent to finished products. We have reduced our own country to what we had hoped to reduce the third world to but never had the technology or power to do. America just exists for international corporations, and some are fine with that. That minority does not even bother to pretend to give a rat's patoot about American people.
Why does our government recognize the Iraqi people's right to a share of its country's oil wealth, but to even suggest the same thing here is to threaten the world military machine that causes these problems in the first place.
There is no mistake that the trend being pushed at all the propaganda levels is towards an publicly unconscious, re-designed and re-branded in parriotic red white and blue disinformational American symbols is fascism that had the admiration and support of corporations everywhere before the war. Our own financial icons, Ford and many others that owned the giant trusts admired and supported many of the ideals of the fascists and fascist thought coming from Europe, especially when confronting their own fears having to be responsible to people and countries that was their fear from Bolshevism, that had a mathematical like logic to it that appeals to anyone who has a brain and bothers to read the ideas in it. And by the way Fascism does not a lot of sense in some of its basic ideas too.
The ones who have no power are the people. People are institutionally disempowered politically and economically, unless you have proved yourself to the "corporatocracy" or just gotten totally lucky or profitably criminal. If we continue on the road we are going we will have to redeefine the average American as a factory product fairly soon.
No, the big story was that he was a CEO and there were sniping jealous detractors from the left that Americans should ignore.
One thing would be to realize that it is a war, and that even if you work for a corporation you are a person too and have a legitimate and real interest in your power and interests as a person that just being part of a corporation are antithetical to.
And, we need to pay more attention and distribute more information about what is really going on, so that people realize their political stake as people, and take it seriously.
We need to have more infrormation about corporations that are not American corporations and maybe change the charter of the corporation to put a boilerplate statement about pursing the public good as the first goal, something that used to be in all corporate charters that is totally gone now.
Re SCOTUS giving corporations first-amendment rights: If they do, it will be abundantly clear that America is jointly owned by the big corporations. Since they can outspend anyone but each other, the individual person loses their political voice.
Something is going to have to give and I worry about how that will manifest itself.
Sounds like Atlas Shrugged.
Yes but mostly in defense and war spending. What does that tell you about republibots?? ''POWER, GIVE ME POWER''.
Bewear my friend those of enlightenment and understanding, for they are deadly. However, we are fired up and making a change happen everyday.
Look at advertising. Sex and fear are the two most powerful tools. Note that both come from the endocrine glands.
The only reason the Dems are rolling over on things like the public option is because they are beholden to the health insurance and pharma industry. We will not break the strangle hold corporations have on our nation until we end their involvement in elections. I think we should make a new amendment to the constitution that guarantee's the seperation of corporations and state. Contributions to candidates for public office should be limited to individuals only and have a $2,000 limit. And corporations would not be allowed to finance or contribute to PACs.
So are you saying that the birthers, deathers, tea baggers and moroners, are ''not'' racists. If you really think that, you're not to bright. Tell me why there are ''no'' black people involved in these rallies?? Tell me why the vast majority of the leaders of the republibot party are middle aged white men from the south?? In my opinion, the modern day republican party ''is'' the party of racism.
And Sen. Snow just jumped ship too. So no RINO votes either. Looks like the Dem's will be going it alone and owning this bill. 2010 will be an ugly year for the Dem's if they go it alone.
One good thing is that they now will be taking their time doing this and the American public can read the bill. No late night strong armed votes when no one is watching.
How about the Cap and Tax bill in the House? The porkulous bill?
Which is a very interesting phenomenon, and the voice of nature rest in the hands of corporate interest, for they may be the only voice that can heard. In that case, I feel sorry for the future of nature which in the end means us.
I for one am afraid that if I were to lose my job, I would be face with one of the following choices concerning my healthcare.
1: Cobra..which is unaffordable.
2: Face a fine from the U.S. Government for not having health insurance.
3: Buy the U.S. Government healthcare option.
As you can tell from the above scenario, you can be forced onto Government ran healthcare. Anyone who tells you otherwise is obviously trying to keep you misinformed.
Fear is healthy.....be afraid.....be very afraid.