I am so sick of the damned fear-mongering.

The BBQ Pit
1

From either side. The right is particularly to blame for this, but there has been some left-wing fear mongering going on from time to time, but this bullshit from right wing pundits and Fox News is just pissing me off. “Liberal” stopped having the intended fear mongering effect, so now all people left of center are socialists, and we’re all going to rot in the new version of Cuba.

Universal health care will kill old people and ensure than we have 20 hour lines to get a flu shot.

The complete and utter shit about Obama being a Muslim who wants to destroy the US (I know this is only the fringes, but it’s a larger fringe than has been observed in my memory).

The damn birthers, who apparently don’t realize that a fucking ‘certificate of live birth’ IS a birth certificate (Mine, from Ohio, says the exact same thing).

The use of potential terrorist attacks to scare the bejesus out of people to get your way on military policy (as an Army vet, I got to see it filter into the military itself.) I know the dangers are there, and I’m all for protection of the US against Al Qaida, but the sky is falling shit was horrendous at its peak, and it’s still there a bit now. I love how government control of our lives and freedoms (warrantless wiretaps, indefinite holding and interrogation, etc) is OK if it’s to protect against terrorism, but if you want to help give self employed people health care they can actually afford, you’re a commie bastard.

And now this horseshit storm about Obama’s address for kids to stay in school and work hard. The real storm about ‘we should work to improve education.’ God forbid! I fucking hated GWB, but I would have lauded him if he had made a similar nationwide address.

I’m just sick of the fear mongering. If you disagree with a political point, discuss it. If you strongly disagree, then disagree vehemently. I have no problem with that, but the escalation to the end of times shit that seems to come out on EVERY democratic idea in the past 10 years has made me want to puke.

2

What is shameful is how successful fear mongering is in America. It wouldn’t be so successful if Americans were better informed.

3

The Power of Nightmares is one of the most interesting political documentaries I’ve ever seen, charting the failure of “positive” ideologies in western politics and the inevitable decline into exaggerating the negatives which politicians will save you from. It’s in three 1 hour parts, and you will never view politics the same again.

4

It burns my ass even more that the Democrats won’t do anything to refute the fear-mongering.

Even with a majority in congress, they still kowtow to the right at every turn. They’re in a perfect position to change all of the idiotic perceptions the right has force-fed the naive, to pass useful legislation, to make “conservative” the new cuss word, to make the Limbaughs and Hannitys swallow their bullshit babble and fade away into obscurity…and still they won’t do anything other than stay on the defensive and whine.

A: Jack-booted, domineering thugs who govern by force, smear tactics, fear and intimidation.

OR

B: Ineffectual, candyass, cringing little weenies who won’t even try to defend themselves or their position.

Unfortunately, there is no C, D, or E.

5

From afar, it seems almost surreal.

It looks like the population has been trained to react to ideological rhetoric regardless of its relevance to the issue in hand with more ideological rhetoric.

It’s emotional, seemingly visceral when it needs to be exactly the inverse.

And it’s not just the information that is dishonest, you will not have a democracy if the media do not frame the debates themselves with responsibility.

I hate to say it, but it is manufactured consent, isn’t it?

6

You know, I would have responded to this thread with something like, “It’s just the media, no one really buys into this shit.” But since joining Facebook and having about 100 friends on there, there are about 5 or 6 who EVERY FUCKING DAY write tirades on how the left is going to send the US into poverty or like the point you brought up, Jman, Obama’s speech to kids in classrooms. The furor that this incited is mind-boggling. Comments like “I’ll raise my own kid, Mr. President, thankyouverymuch!” (actual comment) litter my Facebook home page every day. It IS surreal, PrettyVacant. It’s almost as if people don’t have the ability or desire to think for themselves are parrot (or worse, actually BELIEVE) whatever they hear.

It’s amazing.

7

A voice from the Right here totally agreeing with the OP. This is a opportunity for really engaging in the system, and there are plenty of real things to challenge both sides on, and we are squandering it by pandering to the hysterics out there.

8

I hate to break it to you but it isn’t an American thing, it’s a human thing. In every culture that there is and has been on this earth there have been those who roused the fears of the public in order to manipulate them.

9

Was it really that different 6-7 years ago with the cheese-eating surrender monkeys, the axis of evil, the associations of Saddam with 9/11, Colin Powells absurd presentation of ‘evidence’ to the UNSC?

That looked pretty surreal as well.

10

False equivalence. Once the Dems blow a trillion or two conquering some shithole in the name of freedom, you might have a point, but until then Iraq stands without peer as a gleaming pillar of right wing idiocy.
I haven’t even heard Bush or Republican congressional leaders apologize yet, has anyone?

11

‘The Right. Frightening the sheeple since 2001.’

I’ve posted before about how, before Little Boots started his war, some of my coworkers Behind the Orange Curtain were convinced that Saddam Hussein was going to nuke the U.S. They completely bought the whole 'Do you want the “smoking gun” to be a mushroom cloud :eek: ’ thing that was being touted by the scaremongers. They obediently wet their pants whenever the Terror Alert was raised. I’ve related how a man on the freeway was apoplectic when he saw my BUCK FUSH bumper sticker (before the war started). I read another message board (when I’m feeling masochistic) full of Chicken Littles who seriously believe the things in the OP.

The same gang has been deliberately frightening people for years. And the Left have blown it. Instead of working all these years to better conditions for Americans – working for health care, and improving education – they’ve put their energies into trivial things like gun control; something guaranteed to piss off the heartland. Instead of fighting fire with fire, they’ve tried logic and reason. Logic and reason don’t work on a mob.

12

Speaking of the other message board I lurk at, I post this exchange to illustrate how far things have gone:

So it doesn’t matter what the message is, even if the message is something all sides can agree on. It’s ‘Them-uns’ and ‘We-uns’.

13

Right! I was watching Fox and Friends yesterday (because I hate myself and deserve to suffer) when someone asked one of the psychotic parents what, exactly, was so wrong with the President telling kids to stay in school? He went on with the typical crazy-person claptrap, “Obama is always apologizing for America, and I think America is great!” etc. That doesn’t even answer the question! The crazy person was pressed, and asked if he previewed the speech, and there was nothing in it about aborting babies and negotiating with terrorists, would he be okay with his kid watching the speech? His answer was still no! That’s when I just threw up my arms and screamed, “You’re not even opposed to anything that’s being done! Why do you claim you’re against the content of the speech, when admittedly the content is irrelevant!”

Gah!

I was reading a short story recently whose name and author I forget, but some faux hysteria was created over a tasteless joke, the participants were harassed and stalked, and the like. As the hubbub dies down, the narrator says something like “The whole thing blew over once everyone realized the outrage over the event was inversely proportional to its significance.” I chuckled to myself and asked, “When has *that *ever happened?”

14

One of the things that looks particularly odd from afar is that, for the Right to make any kind of sense, it requires an acceptance of the central conceit - like in Buffy you have to accept the vampire thing on some level and then get into the story.

In this case the conceit is that there is a socialist world out there that the President is sympathetic with and from whom the US must save itself; it’s the Right Way vs. The Side of Darkness.

There’s just a bunch of first-world nations, from Sweden in the north to Australia in the south, from Japan in the east to Canada in the west, that have matured health care policies over decades, supported by electorate after electorate.

It makes me think the only way to maintain the conceit is to ensure the debate remains parochial - that is, divested of an international dimension.

If, for example, the London office of CNN spent 30 mins. a night for a week interviewing random people as they came out a random hospital anywhere in Europe, this debate would be over. I can’t think any European national tv broadcaster (except in Berlucconi’s Italy) would not do that. It informs the debate at a ‘real people’ level.

So, I come back to the media again, and the way the debate is framed in disingenuous, emotion-inciting, ideology-provoking terms. It’s looks like it’s set up for a prat fall before you start.

15

I preferred to call him, “Gilligan the Hun”.

16

And when those fears get in the way of clear-sighted decision-making, those fear-mongers become traitorous.

17

I’ll bet they have no idea what “the republic for which it stands” refers to.

18

You forgot clown.

19

The repubs and Fox should adopt the homeland security color codes. Obama giving a speech to school kids would be an Orange Alert.
When a pro-healthcare change dem is explaining his view, the bottom of the screen should flash "orange alert’. There would only be ,no alert and orange alert. The dems are very scary. Ideas that would help the people are very ,very orange. Ideas that help corporations are in no need of an alert.
Corporations can only do good and they have been chosen by god to help all. They would have no alerts ,whatever they say or do.

20

Is this different than it used to be?

I feel like the last 5-7 years or so has been dominated by a complete, almost comical, distrust of the other party. I keep telling myself that it didn’t used to be this way, during the Clinton or Reagan eras. I imagine that Congress didn’t break down completely and utterly along party lines on practically every issue. I don’t recall completely nonsensical attacks on the President, or that every decision / statement was something to be attacked, or that the President / his Party were Evil/Socialist/Fascist.

Am I wrong? I hope I’m wrong, and it’s just my perception changing.