You have everything to fear, including fear itself

[babylonsister]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/2011306843_pitts11.html

Leonard Pitts Jr.
You have everything to fear, including fear itself


Thanks to a fundraising document left in a hotel, writes columnist Leonard Pitts Jr., we now have validation of something we've known since Sept. 11, 2001: The Republican Party's message can be boiled down to a single command: Be very afraid.

Fear again.

Not hope, nor patriotism, nor progress, nor any of the nobler emotions and impulses by which human beings are driven. Nope. None of those.

Instead, fear. Again.

We've seen this movie many times. So there is little that is surprising about the Republican National Committee fundraising document recently reported by Politico, the one that offers strategies to get donors to part with their money. Donors can, it says, be persuaded to give by appealing to their egos, by offering them tchotchkes, or by promising them access. And some, the small donors, the five- and 10-dollar Janes and Joes, can be persuaded if you play to their fears.

The sole surprise is that someone actually wrote it down as a PowerPoint presentation and was absent-minded enough to leave a hard copy in a hotel.

Here, then, is the smoking gun, concrete validation for those of us who contend that since Sept. 11, 2001, fear has been the GOP's leading export, that under the aegis of George W. Bush's political guru Karl Rove, the party's message boiled down to a single command: Be very afraid.

snip//

And as winning a formula as that proved to be during the long, tiring decade just ended, it also left you wondering if they could not offer — and we did not "deserve" — better. It left you nostalgic for politicians left and right who sought to move us by nobler expedients, who knew that people are at their best when they rally for, instead of always, and only, against.

Instead, we now had people who told us we actually had much more to fear than fear itself, who said morning in America had become high noon, a never-ending showdown between us and Them, a perpetual faceoff against frightening, evil Others.

snip//

Meantime, I leave you with a quote from the eminent philosopher Lucy Van Pelt, who once told her friend, Charlie Brown, "If we can find out what you're afraid of, we can label it."

And who knew Lucy was a Republican?

[Newest Reality]

1. I would propose ...

a new definition for the word, terrorist:

Any elected official who willingfly and knowledgably obstructs, diverts, or maliciously maligns what is demonstrably beneficial and of the most good for the common welfare of his or her constiuents while simultaneously following personal, hidden and/or corporate agendas primaily for personal benefits, including, but not excusive to: payoffs, campaign funds, favors, perks, benefits to family and friends, future favorable employment positions with colluders in a terroist act. Also see: CEO, corporate executive, lobbyist, denfense contractor.

Oh wait, that's somewhat reminiscent of a Fascist. Sorry!

Either way, that's where our fears are not only justified and more realistic, they turn the tables on the manipulative fear mongers. That is, if the fear produces a will to make bold changes from the ground up.

[Donnachaidh]

2. that pretty much covers everyone in DC.

:rofl:

[swilton]

3. Adam Curtis Documentaries

The Power of Nightmares, The Trap, The Century of the Self are worth watching...

Go to the bottom of this webpage

http://www.rewtube.com/