Gene Lyons on the Politics of Fear

[mooseandsquirrel]

snip

In a nutshell, it’s the politics of fear. Authoritarian Catholics and fundamentalist divines of the Jerry Falwell / Pat Robertson / James Dobson persuasion now sing from the same hymnal. See, it’s not enough to be tolerant ; anything but wholehearted agreement constitutes an attack on their faith. When I encounter that kind of frantic certitude, I figure it’s not me they’re working so hard to persuade.

All that I get. As I say, it’s an old story. The classic historical study of the subject is Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” What I cannot understand, however, is how the Bush White House appears to have succeeded in turning so many once-proud Americans into little whiny crybabies seemingly willing to abandon their constitutional freedoms in the name of the “war on terror.”

snip

http://moose-and-squirrel.com/gene/gene.html

[Straight Shooter]

1. Most of those "whiny crybabies" don't even live in terrorist target cities

That is what confounds me about them. If anyone should be fearful, it's New Yorkers. But they reject bush overwhelmingly.

No one ever said that Americans are logical, though. Far from it.

Thanks for sharing this. Lyons is one of my favorites. :thumbsup:

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Usually they live in isolation from many groups.

I mean, northwest AR is like 99% white, and what do we have? A KKK outfit down the road, warning against non-whites. Now that there is an influx of Hispanics who came to work in the chicken processing plants, there is a certain amount of fear--from the towns where there are no such plants. In the towns where the Hispanics have settled, there doesn't seem to be a problem. I think it is easier to generate fear where people are isolated and don't have a chance to find out that people are more alike than different. And these people are the ones Bush is catering to with his messages of fear.