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Where Does America's Fear Come From?
An anonymous reader writes "While far from a dictatorship, the United States has employed a number of paranoid tactics that delegitimize its democracy. And the motivation for doing so is — fear. That seems to be a long way from 'So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself: nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.' Where is the U.S. heading?"
Fear give those in Power, control of the command person.
I take it you've been dealt an above average hand then.
I don't think the primary motivation for massive surveillance and such things is fear. In my opinion it is about control and power. Being able to silence any opposition before it gets organized and knowing in advance which groups dissent is growing gives you the power to stay in control longer. Fear is only used to gain acceptance of the public: think of the terrorists etc.
Where is the U.S. heading?
Nowhere special. The US has been like this for ages. Apart from some details (TSA, leaks, technical possibilities) there has not been any real big change.
The fear has been around for just about always. And when there's nothing left to fear (like communism or alcohol) something new will be made up (like terrorism or drugs). Since the US spends more on its military than on social security, the military has become some kind of social security. It must be kept busy.
0x or or snor perron?!
My family visited Europe this Fall and were surprised at the level of civility experienced there.
It seems that fear and paranoia drive Americans to give up liberties in trade for some vague promise of security. "Stand your ground" laws and the vast supposedly all knowing NSA wiretapping program are just two small examples of the manifestation of all pervading fear and paranoia.
Other First World Nations have a different balance between liberty and security. It's not that they don't spy on each other. It's not that good people don't die at the hands of bad people. It has to be experienced elsewhere to know that things don't _have_ to be they way they are in the US.
I can't help but feel it has to do, in small part, with basic civility between humans. Too bad America can't/won't follow these better, more secure examples.
Same answer as always: You've Got to Be Carefully Taught.
once american politicians realized that they could use a great common enemy as a political tool, it soon followed that all they needed to do in order to maintain their power was to invent more enemies. first "communism", now "terrorism", along with all the other vague ideas america wages war against, it all seems to have its roots in the cold war.
You know, I think there's something to this. In Europe, for example, facts and figures are checked and cross checked. When opposing parties discuss the direction of public policy, they discuss, often from very different ideological points of view, from the same set of facts and figures.
By contrast, in the US, anyone can make up their own facts and figures to "prove" their point. No one can act as a trusted source because no one trusts the opposition's ideological basis for anything. It's all smoke and mirrors. There is no legitimate fact or real world number-based authority over which reality can be argued. In America, highly charged emotional perception is the rule.
... Faux News
Second: guns. Having a gun is a sign you are afraid. What are you afraid of? Ans: all the other people with guns.
There is no easy answer to these problems as they are deeply rooted in human nature and are probably survival instints. Just ones that were developed as cavemen but have now got way out of control.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Lol Trust me Bush did more damage in one year than the whole of the current presidents will ever do.
The rest of he world is either crying over their dead or alternating between amused and disappointed in US actions since 9/11.
Guns, healthcare, climate change, Iraq war, summary execution without trial and with innocent victims, It's like watching a bizarre right wing satire show. If it was fiction it would be hilarious.
Your post is merely confirmation that the biggest problem we have in the US is really stupid fucking people who can only regurgitate bumper sticker talking points, and who prefer to be lied to like two dollar whores instead of using their brain to actually think. People like you are why the fucknuts get elected who go out of their way to pass crap like the Patriot Act, and to invade other countries for no reason.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
there has not been any real big change
The USA used to have the USSR to keep it in check and provide a limit to the US's more paranoid actions against foreign countries it imagined might harm it. Now that the USSR is no more, the USA allows it's fear and insecurity to run rampant and bomb the crap out of every little thing that gives it nightmares - whether rational or not.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Probably more as a plutocracy than a dictatorship.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
And the Kardashians!
Oh and Honey Boo Boo!
And the schools!
We've become a nation of self-gratifying, illiterate dip-shits who would much rather not be informed and learn about an issue and take the time to vote or to become involved even when your liberty is at stake. Human nature being what it is, It's easier to panic and pray that the leaders we elect can actually lead and take everything they say at face value. Unfortunately for the rest of us, your { congressman | senator | president } is senile or so wrapped up in pandering to big campaign contributors or party interests that they have little stake in protecting your liberty; for them it's all about getting re-elected. That's why when things like the patriot act come along we all say "it's a good thing because it will protect me from all the terrorists out there." "Terrorists are bad mmkay?" and the spin doctors go on all the news talk shows that drone on and on about issues like Benghazi and then suddenly shift to Obamacare because Benghazi is so like last year dude! Because you don't become involved and you keep voting that party line you suddenly realize now that you have to have a virtual strip search just to board a plane or that TSA agents will stop you getting off of a train and search you. Why? Because those terrorists are bad people and they hate us so you have to give up your privacy and your liberty in order to win the war on terror. And all the while you hear "we're winning!" That's right, we're winning and just because every new drone strike creates more hatred and more enemies for us to kill, we'll be able to keep this war up as long as necessary or until we can't sell anymore bonds to pay for it all. Because we're "in a war" we'll then create more government bureaucracy and will give money to your local law enforcement so they can all dress up like jackbooted Nazis with sub-machine guns!
So keep watching the Kardashians and just leave your safety to those folks you elect, who get re-elected over 70% of the time, who you've probably never met, who have staff that create talking points that become sound bites, that play video poker during important hearings, that lie to you about keeping your health insurance, who really were "C" students in college and were drunk all the time, who receive all that money from special interests that feed off of your tax dollars, who hand feed pieces of legislation they never read already written up so they really don't have to work and slap their name on it, who pass legislation because it's so massive "You just have to pass it to see what's in it" and because they go through special lines at the airport and don't get nudeo scans.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Yep, sounds like one of these trust fund baby Marxists. I will grant the GP the following: the saying "easy come, easy go" is true. Things worked hard for are valued relatively much higher in the eyes of the person who did the work. HOWEVER it doesn't follow that therefore the whole point of life is to suffer, nor that by making your fellow man suffer needlessly you're doing him a favor. Of course most employers/managers seem to believe this, but that is sadism not compassion.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is a pretty tall claim. Any evidence to back it up?
Where is moderation: -1 False?
You don't understand - it's the position that corrupts, not the person that is corrupt. You could "elect" the most honest person, and end up with the worst tyrant. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. There is a reason this is not a new saying.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Sure it is, it's just not happening where it used to happen. Been to Latin America lately? Hell of a boom down here. We're not that poor anymore.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's older than that. People haven't changed for 10s of thousands of years. We just have better records of the more recent stuff.
For the hundredth time.
Capitalism does not reward hard work.
It rewards marketability and cunning investment.
The whole point of the "capital" in "capitalism" is to NOT have to work hard. It's an economic system which takes advantage of human laziness. You may think this is good or bad, workable or unworkable, but that's still how it is.
The hardest workers I've ever met are all dirt poor. They either lack the fortune or the inclination to make money - IOW they're either disabled, dumb or idealistic. (And note well that there's nothing wrong with being any of these, with the proviso that being thick does not include wilful ignorance.)
If food an games aren't sufficient to keep your populace at bay, you'll use fear. Using fear has it's limitations, because once people will get hungry because you don't provide them with food, they will revolt. History has always proven this principle right and it will do so again. Over 40% of the USA citizens are around or below poverty rates and this number is still growing each year. Regardless of what political party is in control when that happens, there will be mass protests and plundering going on, just like in Egypt or any country where hunger and poverty is abundant and only a few rich people have control.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
It tends to corrupt, but that doesn't mean everyone becomes equally corrupted.
It's easy to ruin any public figure's reputation, so powerful interests have them all by the balls. If humans weren't such a bunch of self-righteous sanctimonious cunts who want glorious heroes rather than efficient administrators, we'd have politicians expert at things other than propagandising ("PR") and lawyering.
Define "honest" first. Some of the most despicable sumbitches in history have been scrupulously honest. They believe everything that they ever said, and they honestly believe that they are creating a better world. While I despise Dick Cheney, and I only despise Bush slightly less than Cheney, I can make a pretty clear case that both were "honest men".
I would hope that you value honesty, but I would also hope that you don't naively equate "honest" with "good" or "effective leadership" or "honorable men", or much of anything else.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
This has been going on for a very long time and I saw it as a kid. WAY back when there was rampant Trick or Treating, there were vague reports of "razors in apples" and stuff like that. It's just nonsense. As a child, even I saw it as nonsense, but my mother took it quite seriously every year inspect our haul piece by piece.
We have systems over-run with parasitic lawyers who live on fears which eventually becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
And the Vietnam "domino theory"? That war on "communism"? Once again, I have seen this for the farce it was since I was a child. When I learned what communism is, I thought "hey this is a great idea for the future of man's civilization!" And when examining what existed, we saw extreme violence against the people and an elite power structure that benefited themselves while making their people miserable. That's not communism. And THAT image is what got everyone "fighting the war on communism." From that we got the Cold War, the Military Industrial Complex thrived on the fears of a whole nation.
It has been going on far longer than partisan politics in its current form. You realize that "the conservatives" were once the democrats and "the liberals" were the republicans a few decades ago? But that was before the republicans pulled "god on their side" to get the religious vote.
Before people can see past the current partisan politics, people have to be able to see a history that hasn't quite made it into the books.
The fear comes from propaganda penned by the elite. The elite that control America's politics and economy are constantly afraid of the Sword of Damocles -- an angry mob of Americans calling for their blood for their failure to do something or other. Fifty years ago it was a fear of a communist revolt, where the people take away their power if not their life. Now it's a fear of some crisis happening and being seen as not having done enough to prevent it. As a result, politicians want to be seen as "doing something", even if what they're doing is ineffective or counterproductive. If there's supposedly a "drug crisis", politicians will pass laws to be seen as "tough on drugs". It works the same for terrorism or any other societal ill, real or perceived. Opportunistic politicians, as opposed to being afraid, turn this around and sponsor a bill, make a story and pretend as if there's a real problem, in order to gain popularity or power; this is the malice on the flipside of the former problem's ignorance.
Despite most Americans being more interested in money than politics, big business and finance tend to get less public scrutiny than government. These sectors are equally afraid of the people though: witness how quickly they used government resources and propaganda to cause the Occupy movement to lose steam.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Didn't take long to disintegrate into partisan politics, huh? As Falconhell already pointed out, Herr Bush instituted most of the stuff that Obama plays with today. Think about it, Herr Coward.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
In the sense of merging of corporation and state, America's as close as the world has got to sustained Italian corporatism, i.e. fascism in the pre-Hitler sense.
(Hitler wanted the same thing, but he also wanted a land war in Asia, and that's where he went too fa.. oh wait. Seriously though, America is fascist, for the traditional European definition of fascism.)
Uhm. You're demonstrating yourself as being a participant of the problem itself. Look here for my comment on what you have just stated. I don't want to be too redundant.
Go back in time, if you're old enough to remember, the long history of fear-peddling in this country. We have gained a "grazing herd of farm animals" level of instinctive fear in this country and we, as a people generally buy into the narratives without question. The media has catered almost exclusively to the "lowest common [intellectual] denominators" for decades on end. You think that hasn't affected the development of the US culture over the decades?
It goes well beyond what you're trying to suggest. You're looking at a single symptom and excluding all of the rest of the data.
Fox News may play fast and loose with the facts, but that doesnt change the fact that sources like MSNBC are much much worse.
CNN: 54% factual reporting, 46% commentary/opinion.
FOX: 45% factual reporting, 55% commentary/opinion.
MSNBC: 15% factual reporting, 85% commentary/opinion.
Here is the full report.
"His name was James Damore."
. . .planted the seeds that have bloomed, revealing what is tantamount to aristocracy.
1. The Big Senate no longer represents the people meaningfully.
2. The Little House no longer represents the 50 States United, or offers any thoughtful feedback to the Big Senate.
3. The federal government has eminent domain over your wallet.
4. DC is printing money at will, demolishing the value of what you think is in your wallet, and obstructing reform.
5. We're all modern monetary theorists now.
So shut up, peasants, and avert your gaze when your Progressive Overlords pass by.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
No, it's not the position that corrupts. It's the system that requires either candidate, who is successful at getting his name on the ballot paper, to screw-over, lie, back-stab and manipulate, in order to get there. No honest person would ever make it through the selection process. Nor would they ever be able to bring themselves to do all the things necessary to raise the millions of $$ needed to win (or: rather, buy) the campaign.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
... and its promotion of a xenophobic education system, xenophobic religious presence, and xenophobic foreign policy.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Well we have at least 25 centuries of Chicken Little/Henny Penny folklore warning us about the dangers of Faux News and the society destroying consequences of it. We obviously have a had time to collectively assimilate the danger however given that news organizations can now legally lie to you.
Despite the technological advances we as a species have been here before... and going by history - it is going to get ugly before it gets better.
Don't forget luck. That's an important factor, too.
It's not a new thing. Remember the Red Scare? Remember the Internment Camps and Witch Hunts? It's the ancient fear of the unknown, of other tribes to be precise.
Fear is instinctual in humans, granted to us through millions of years of evolution. It exists, and need only be cultivated into hysteria to cloud minds. The fear comes from within, that's what makes it powerful. It should be considered a crime to wield fear against the ignorant masses. Those stoking the fear are fearmongers, or scaremongers -- The word looks familiar because these are the same as warmongers. As the Chomsky showed us decades ago, fear and filters are used to manufacture consent.
For what ends? Oh, I think we know that too, very well indeed.
The question is wrong. We know where the fear comes from. The more apt question is why we are more scared of terrorists than fast cars and fast food, which combined claim over four hundred 9/11 scale attacks in victims every year? The answer isn't no one is brave. The answer is no one is educated. It's been over a decade. That's four thousand 9/11 scale attacks in victims... Will you still drive and occasionally eat junk food? Yes? Then how can anyone justify the spending to prevent such a minuscule threat to life in terrorism at such a great cost? It's because they're ignorant.
A small child turns on the light to reveal what the dark has kept from them, and is no longer afraid. Without ignorance there can be no fear. The scale of the threat is never given context, so it seem more ominous than it is; When in reality its not that big of a deal. Terrible, yes, but so are car accidents and heart attacks, yet we wouldn't agree to give up our Freedoms, Privacy or our French Fries to prevent them.
The warmongers who want to line their pockets with trillions we could be spending to actually protect and benefit us at home claim Terroists are nothing to sneeze at, but if you set a 9/11 scale attack next to the Flu, you'll notice there are six times more dead Americans every year from the Flu. Fire the liars. Fight fear with facts.
Given how intensely the left hates the right and the right hates the left? I'm thinking more 'The United States of Canada' and 'Jesusland.'
From a European perspective, America doesn't have 'left' and 'right' wings. They have the 'right' and 'extreme right' wing.
Ask your progressive friends how much they depend on MSNBC for news, and ask your conservative friends how much they depend on Fox News. Also ask them what they perceive the news to opinion ratio to be on each. That's the real difference.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Capitalism rewards profitable work. Whether that work is easy or hard is immaterial.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
There is no difference in parties in how they sell their platforms. Republicans use fear of foreign powers, fear of government, fear of immigrants and fear of loss of financial independence. Democrats use fear of racists, fear of religious institutions, fear of loss of government subsidies and fear of foreign powers.
The biggest difference really is how they view government: Republicans pander to those that fear government and Democrats pander to those that fear the lack of government. The message of fear was beaten by a guy selling hope.
-- $G
Opposing parties also means not just one party, but multiple parties.
Also many times governements are made from several parties. This means they need to compromise. Compromise is a GOOD thing in politics.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
This post assumes that the actions of the federal government are in response to people's fears. That's your problem right there, you've got it backwards. It's the government who is acting in bad faith to begin with, and is then just looking for some cover to excuse it.
You didn't really think it takes $4 Trillion to catch a bunch of terrorists, did you?
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Capitalism does not reward hard work. It rewards marketability and cunning investment.
Actually, what it rewards most is having capital. And what it punishes most is not having capital.
If I have capital, I can invest it, not particularly cunningly, in S&P 500 ETFs and get a not-terrible return for doing no work at all. At worst, I'll be pulling in 0.5% from my bank with it. If I collect enough capital, then I don't need to do any work whatsoever and I'll be able to live comfortably by demanding other people's work in the form of purchases.
If I don't have capital, then anything that I buy will be done on credit, making it more expensive than if I had bought it outright. For example, if I use a credit card to buy food and don't pay it off right away, than the cost of my groceries is at least 25% higher due to the payments to the credit card company. So that means that because I started with less capital (for whatever reason), I actually have to work harder to pay for the same things that the person with $150K lying around can just buy.
An example from my day-to-day: I was lucky enough to be born into a family that could afford to pay for my bachelor's degree. That gave me an income of $2400 or so higher than classmates who started out earning about as much as I did. 2 years later, that translated into the just under $5000 I needed to buy a car to get to a better-paying job, saving me about $3000 a year in car loan payments. So now I'm basically earning $5K more than an equally-hardworking and responsible colleagues and classmates, and that allows me to save up for all sorts of things more easily than they can. The uneven playing field happens to be tilted somewhat in my favor, solely because I started with assets rather than debts.
I am officially gone from
That looks at the percentage factual reporting vs. opinion reporting. That's a completely different question from the accuracy of the facts.
Example:
Foo reports: "The most powerful person of the U.S. is the president. The American president has green skin. Only Martians have green skin. We should not let the fate of America be controlled a Martian."
Ratio of "fact" reporting to opinion reporting: 3:1 (three "fact" sentences, one opinion statement). Number of actual facts: 1.
Bar reports: "The most powerful person of the U.S. is the president. However his power is not absolute. But his power should be absolute. It is not a good idea to divert some power to the congress."
Ratio of fact reporting to opinion reporting: 1:1 (two fact sentences, two opinion sentences). Number of actual facts: 2.
The fact/opinion statistics would prefer Foo. However Bar, despite its higher and obviously stupid opinion part, has only actual facts, and even more of those than Foo, where two of three "facts" are fake.
Now I have no idea about the quality of facts of Fox vs. MSNBC. All I wanted to point out is that the statistics you quoted is completely unrelated to this question.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I think the tall claim is " In Europe, for example, facts and figures are checked and cross checked. When opposing parties discuss the direction of public policy, they discuss, often from very different ideological points of view, from the same set of facts and figures.".
Do you have any evidence to back THAT up?
(I'm from Europe, politicians never let facts and figures get in the way of ideology).
TFA sez:
And the motivation for doing so is â" fear
Dunbal sez:
Nothing has changed because basic human nature is the same. This is the way it will always be. So you get to choose whether you want to be part of the herd near the edge looking for the wolves, or oblivious somewhere the middle, or if you want to be a wolf. Being near the edge isn't a problem because you see the danger coming, so you get a head start. Being in the middle, you don't even realize the danger is there until the whole herd is moving.. And of course being a wolf has its own unique advantages: you get to eat mutton and you get to watch the whole herd fear you. But you have no herd for protection and in trying times, the other wolves don't mind eating wolf, too
Both the above have failed to realize that there is another entity in the picture --- the one who puts ***FEAR*** in the midst and use it for its own dastardly agenda.
A true analogy : Fish farmers who ship live fishes in flexitanks used to be troubled by the large number of fish turned belly up during the transit, and finally someone found a simple way to solve the problem --- they put a live crab inside the same flexitank with the fish.
Because of that one live crab, the fishes were pre-occupied with fear throughout the journey, and as a result, up to 95% of the fishes arrived at the destination still alive.
Same thing happens in the United States.
Because of the fear that has been instilled by the government the people forgot about everything else and willingly surrender their rights, their liberty, their privacy, just so they can remain "protected".
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
IOW they're either disabled, dumb or idealistic.
Or some of us just love our jobs, despite the fact that the pay sucks.
In a long-lived slashdot tradition, it doesn't appear that anyone on this discussion thread read the fine article. It argues that freedom is the root of fear in America. More specifically it is the freedom myth - that we are a nation founded in freedom - that is the root of all fear and paranoia in America. He compares 3 countries with what he defines as cultures of fear based in freedom myth as the root of their anti-democratic evils: the US, Israel and Apartheid South Africa.
In his view we are slaves to a culture created in the back of covered wagons, with women and children cowering in fear from the isolation and danger crossing the frontier alone.
I suppose it is left to the reader to divine what the solution would be if the problem is that we venerate freedom too much.
You don't understand - it's the position that corrupts, not the person that is corrupt. You could "elect" the most honest person, and end up with the worst tyrant. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. There is a reason this is not a new saying.
Dude, if they were corrupt we'd be in a much different mess. Think about it.
The people with the money to pay the biggest bribes are in business. They'd prefer lower taxes and an end to regulations, but what they really need is certainty on things like the debt ceiling and the Federal budget. If it was just a matter of spending $50 Billion on bribes Tim Cook could cut the checks himself, tomorrow; instead of thanking our lucky stars that they delayed the budget/debt ceiling dispute a few months we would never have heard of a budget/debt ceiling dispute.
I agree that if Congress were more ethical we'd be in a much better situation, as would most people. The problem is that I define ethical much differently then a guy who thinks ObamaCare is evil would. Since guys who agree with me won half of Congress, but guys who agree with him won the other half, we get this constant BS arguing and brinksmanship over the same BS they were arguing over and brinking over back in 2010.
Keep in mind this is what the founders wanted. They believed that a government where Congress and the President were constantly arguing would protect freedom because no evil policies could possibly get passed.
The American propaganda machine (lead by the 24-hour news channels like Fox, MSNBC and CNN and backed up by other news outlets) dwarfs anything seen in Germany under Hitler or Russia under Stalin.
And, as others have said, its all about the bread (or rather Big Macs, Original Recipe and Coca-Cola) and the circuses (or rather Big Brother, Iron Man and Lady Gaga).
Someone needs to find a way to make politics as exciting as reality TV, that might get people to care more about how their country is run...
the Democrats and Republicans are really the same party, they are both controlled/owned by the banking cartel & military/industrial complex, they only put on a ruse of being separate parties to deceive the US population of being two parties, elections are fake, this nation has been taken over by a corporate/fascist totalitarian kleptocracy made up of a banking cartel & a cabal of industrialists, and the mass media has everyone fooled in to thinking it is democratic
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
On the other hand, voting people into office that have already be corrupted by other influences, such as religion, money, power in the corporate world, etc. is an exceedingly bad idea, as they are sure to be corrupted by the position almost immediately.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
America is 'the land of Opportunity", that is "I can succeed". It is a land of personal wealth and invidual accomplishments.
Don't get me wrong, there are MANY people that make a difference for a lot of other people. But the central premise is individual success as a primary objective. And Greed, at some minor or maor level, is a motivator to succeed personally.
So you've succeeded, and your greed helped. Now you have success, and you want to keep it.
So you are afraid.
And you want to control the situation to keep what you got
And control others to keep them from getting what you got.
A series of three documentaries about the use of fear for political gain
"Narrator: In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this, but their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered their people. Those dreams failed and today people have lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as managers of public life, but now they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us: from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from dreadful dangers that we cannot see and do not understand. And the greatest danger of all is international terrorism, a powerful and sinister network with sleeper cells in countries across the world, a threat that needs to be fought by a War on Terror.
But much of this threat is a fantasy, which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It's a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services and the international media. This is a series of films about how and why that fantasy was created, and who it benefits. At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neo-conservatives and the radical Islamists. Both were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world, and both had a very similar explanation of what caused that failure.
These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended. Together, they created today's nightmare vision of a secret organized evil that threatens the world, a fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. And those with the darkest fears became the most powerful."
In 100 years there won't be a USA. There will be a north American confederacy of states, composed of what was the USA and Canada. It will be a massively decentralised confederacy. Most transportation will be by electric train. Personal transport will be by bicycle. The suburbs will have been abandoned and plowed back into farms. Much of the midwest USA will no longer be habitable due to drought and the collapse of the acquifers from draining them and from poisoning them via gas fracking earlier in the century. This confederacy will eventually unravel as the temperatures increase and the southern sections migrate north. Plagues (most flu but also drug resistant bacteria) will sweep through the urban populations, killing millions. In 1000 years, the population, compared to 2013, will have been more than decimated. What is left of humanity will live in valleys in high elevations, or near the Arctic and Antarctic circle. There will be very little metals left, and many people will live as hunter gatherers. Those cursed with civilisation will mostly live in coastal cities in Siberia and Canada and the horn of S. America. Fishing villages will appear in the archepelago of Antarctica. The level of technology will, at best, be roughly that of the 16th century.
In 10,000 years, the few metals will have long ago oxidised. The few million remaining people will live as hunter gatherers in Siberia and Canada and Antarctica. Everything between the 50th parallels will be a hot desert or a hellish jungle where the wet-bulb temp far exceeds human survival. The few temperate forests left will be in the far north and south. The pyramids will be underwater, and the rest of the world's cities were dismantled and stripped for metals 9,500 years earlier. The Anthropocene will have disrupted the glacial cycle, and the world won't grow cold again for another 50,000 - 100,000 years. In 100,000,000 years, the earth will be a bit warmer than today, as the sun continues to increase its radiance as helium "ash" collects at the core. The decendants of racoons will have evolved and grown into furry bipeds with opposable thumbs and complex social systems. They will re-invent the wheel, and perhaps the scientific method. They will dig into the earth and find a thin layer of carbon and radioactivity. They will find our skeletons, most of them dated to within a few millennia, and realise what happened:
At the edge of the forest is where there is the most activity and disruption. Weed species abound - crappy, sappy, trees with shallow roots, shrubs and grasses that strangle other plants, and this constant churn over territory and nutrients bounded by the soil and the sun permits for a great deal of opportunity for animals and plants to reproduce. One of these weed species evolved in Africa 103,000,000 years earlier than these racoonish scientists. The species was bipedal and omnivorous and highly social. Breaking into bands of 30 to 50 and assembling into crowds of 150 they believed that unseen beings controlled their world. They built shrines to these beings after a particularly cold ice age. To build these shrines they needed members of their society in place all year round, and thus devised small villages and agriculture. This permitted over population, but it also created hierarchy in their society. Where previously sociopathic behaviour was not tolerated in the small bands (murderers were punished by death), sociopaths were now able to flourish and institute systems of slavery and domination. These systems evolved the villages into cities; areas of such density that they required the import of resources. Emphasis on require. Soon, millions of people were slaughter by one city or group of cities for their resources. Shortly there after, the species discovered huge carbon deposits which were burned as fuel, and powered this weed species into planetary dominance. The oceans were quickly emptied of fish, and the air was filled with CO2, and the population skyrocketed. All of the metals that could be extracted, were.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
If that were true, then presumably "Europe"--rather a broad concept, isn't it?--should be "better" than the US. But in what way is it? Much worse unemployment, to name only one thing, and on the other hand major efforts by the rulers to do away with the social welfare state that's been in place since the end of World War II.
I think that the fear at the top has come from the realisation that the way the US works is unsustainable in the long term. I am thinking primarily of the debt-based economy that is based on economic growth to function, the large dependence on oil and the effects of global warming becoming more apparent.
These are smart people. They understand that change from post-WWII model is inevitable and that this change may not come easy.
There is a large probability of future social unrest, riots and organised armed resistance against the ruling caste, so they do what they think is necessary for them to retain control of the country in the future. This is what I think is the real reason behind the de-democratisation of USA.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Well we can take the partisanship out of it if you wish? All of the stuff Obama plays with could have been stopped at any time while he was president, and yet it still continues and he still voted for the extension of the Patriot Act when he was a senator, so I don't think politics has anything to do with the two political parties who are both statists and just want to control us as much as possible. Indeed, for myself, I call Bush Herr Bush and Obama Herr Obama because they are both fascists of different stripes that get off on telling others what they can and can not do. While bush liked to tell us that we have the right to get groped in airports and have a right to treat people like cattle in Guatanamo Bay, we have Obama busy telling us what we can and can not eat, what kinds of power we can use to generate electricity, and so on and so forth. Its seeming more and more like every politician is just trying to trump the previous idiot/dumbass and take away even more of our freedoms while the people shout out about how their political party is so much better....yea partisan politics has sure solved these issues well.
Of course, both political parties are just being fascists for "our own good" and so will tell us what we can eat, what healthcare we can have, and what we can say via the Patriot Act. There is no freedom party in this country because they are all after their own fascist little power trips and they all want to go to war for "our own good" while we the people get shafted with politicians who use our own money to shaft us and turn around and send our young men to die on their pointless little wars. Politics is dead in the US right now if you ask me, and fascism is alive and kicking with the NSA still recording our phone calls for our own protection. We still live in a free country (sort of) but that has sure changed in the last 15 years when we used to have so many more freedoms. I too wonder where this all ends.
is simply a police state, in the velvet-clad incarnation of a surveillance state. [ This goes true, alas, also for certain western European states, most of all Britain and the Netherlands- ]
Fear, indeed, may be a good label to stick upon some of the deeper undercurrents that began flowing through, or rather: under, western culture since september 2001. As bad a motivator as it is, fear is a powerful one. Couple that with consumption and the benumbedness of the lower socio-economic strata ( in the US case I think explicitly of the urbanized black population in its pit of misery ) and you have the most effective tool there is, for less-than-well-intended or simply *stupid* politicians. to bring society under minute control. All the while, most John Does in that same society will still think they live in a "free" country, even bragging about it.
The only thing that would help here were revolution, a revolution of courage. I think of citizens, united in new parties, declaring independence - of or in smaller states. Although for a very unjust cause, the southern states were fighting for just reasons and stood on justified ground. Their attempt at breaking away from the Union could be repeated with peaceful means. Next year, Scotland will be voting on formal independence from the UK - an historical opportunity to get those hateful cameras off their streets, and GCHQ out of their backyard. In the Netherlands, it will needs be done with different means, as breakaway is nearly impossible in such small entities.
All in all, though, I wonder how millions of reasonably smart citizens can undergo the current climate of repression [ see Sarah Harrison's comment on calling a duck a duck ] without a tinge or mere inkling of revolt ?
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I agree that the fascists of mid-C20 Europe did a better job of implementing fascism, though I'm not sure what you mean about "progressives". Here, a progressive person is someone who wants progress - is that used as newspeak in the US?
If you ask me, as a European, I cannot even see the difference between the two parties.
Seriously, if a debate host has to start a sentence with "well, I think we have finally established the first difference between you", you know that you're not dealing with two different parties.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I completely disagree. It becomes obvious immediately when looking from the outside in: Religion corrupts mental ability and personal morality. And I do not even mean that in the sense that it leads you to do bad things. What it does is make you follow whatever the religion mandates instead of looking at things carefully by yourself and making an individual, independent decision. The effect is that as soon as your particular brand of religion turns evil, you go right along with it.
Of course, when you are corrupted in this fashion, it is very hard to see for yourself as one thing religion reliability corrupts is the ability to have a critical view about religion. Sorry, but if you are religious, then you have a mental problem. How large that problem is depends on how strongly your views of the world and of others is determined by religion. There are people that are mentally infected by religion, but are mostly immune to the mental corruption it causes. There are even quite a few people that manage to shake off the illness, usually later in life when they have seen things that made them think. Unfortunately many do not manage to do that.
Of course, for the purpose of this discussion, quasi-religious "world views" like communism, capitalism, national socialism, etc. qualify as religions.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The US is heading in 2 directions, a revolution of violence or a complete collapse coupled with fascism that will begin within the next 5 years.
It's been my opinion that the US is being dismantled, rights, culture, education, unity.
Massive injections of illegal aliens, multiple languages, central religion discredited, collapsed public school system, uneducated children with no culture (think about it what is your culture?) collapsed economy, continually putting the same kind of sociopathic people into the same positions of power.
I think the US is viewed as a problem to a unified one World government and so the termites were dispatched to our financial system, our media was corrupted and now America has no central culture (worth mentioning) and therefore no unity.
We are not "A people".
A public fractured and fighting against its self, economic collapse, well you get the picture.
If you look at history these violent revolutions create a lot of chaos, some things change but given enough time the new society will succumb to the same issues as the last one.
The only society that works long term is one in which all the participants are forever vigilant and active against the creep of stupidity.
That leaves the USA out.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Evil creatures, people who own them really don't understand that the cat is the smartest animal in the home.
Perhaps, but I wish I had a dime for every time my dumbass has smacked herself in the face with her tail.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
No, progressive is used in the same way in the US, for pretty much the same political spectrum. The missing piece of the puzzle for you is that fascism was once understood as a progressive movement until political and practical considerations forced a demarcation.
You may find these items interesting even if much of the discussion is framed in an American context.
What Is a Progressive
A Nicer Form of Tyranny
Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
It's as simple as that, and I am an American myself. I sure as hell wasn't one of the masses crying for "protection" and for the government to infiltrate every aspect of every citizen's lives back when 9/11 happened. My exact thoughts at the time were something along the lines of, "shit happens. People will get over it." Only, apparently I was wrong about people "getting over" it; if they really did, we wouldn't have the dragnet of mass surveillance placed upon us by the federal government as we do now and find ourselves forced to figure out how to reclaim our 4th-Amendment rights (and others).
All 9/11 did was make the whole horde of pussies come out in droves and produce legislation to help drive the government into the ground and weaken its people. The worthless yellow journalism that is the mainstream news sure as hell didn't help much. If that is what the terrorists wanted (to erode the U.S. into a rogue, fascist government with powerless citizens), the Americans didn't put up much of a fight, because that is exactly what they got and with no trouble at all.
The way I see it, the real "terrorists" are my own government. Its citizens need to grow a pair and quit going apeshit over "terrorist attacks" and stand up for their rights and freedoms. It's ironic the way people sharply and strongly react to even just the word "terrorists"; why no talk of all the *wars* going on? Why does no one give a fuck about those, some of which the U.S. is directly a part of? How did people get such a strong hatred of terrorists that kill, and not their own government that does the same fucking thing *on their own behalf*? Looks like another win by the mainstream news corporations, which no doubt have their own political agendas.
I keep seeing the same old pointless 2nd amendment arguments debated over and over and over again, ad nauseum. Enough already, OK? I'm not a gun owner and my politics are anything but conservative, but geez, "the right to bear arms" seems pretty damn clear to me. America is a country where citizens are allowed to have guns, always has been and always will be. I just wish liberals would recognize this truth and drop the issue for good. Gun control is the single most alienating issue I know of on the Left, it does nothing but make enemies of good folk who might otherwise be natural allies. Liberals need to just walk away from the whole arms thing and pretend it never existed. For whatever reason and regardless of the justification, guns in America are here to stay. Deal with it. And yes, I will say it plainly, the sad fact is that occasionally a Columbine or a Sandy Hook is bound to happen, this is the true price we pay for being an armed society of imperfect human beings. Too bad I've never once heard a politician from either side of the aisle get up and admit that or anything remotely like it. It's the truth, though, we should accept it and move on.
For the record, I thought hard about posting this as an AC, but in the end chose not to. Truth is nothing to be ashamed of.
Despotism != Dictatorship. All democracies fall into despotism, Ben Franklin was right.
1) Prosperous people have more to lose; therefore, more to fear. (not boredom) The wealthy fear any changes to the status quo despite their relatively high security; it's a historic trend which characterizes them. A middle class could be expected inherit a tiny bit of those traits. A proper Buddhist for example, is largely free from such fears for good reason (one could argue that the fears help motivate the accumulation of wealth.)
2) Post WW2 was the biggest rise in propaganda in history, social engineering was proven highly effective as the techniques from WW1 were so brilliantly demonstrated and refined before and during WW2. Commercialization of the science made it into an industry (it renamed itself "P.R.".) Fundamental concept tracing all the way (formally) back to Freud is the appeal to "base emotions" - FEAR being a huge one.
3) Culture of fear: Government, Industry... P.R. exploited FEAR for it's powerful influence over rational thought like never before on multiple fronts post WW2. This founded a culture of fear; and the benefactors having every motivation to promote and continue that state of fear to maintain their power/influence. Politically, this meant a never ending supply of ghosts but economically, it ALSO was employed with arguably greater negative impacts on society. Economics is a good one; our witch doctors (economists) shouldn't be upset and we can't address problems because it might destroy all the prosperity etc. (even if it has logical and historical backing, don't upset the "gods" continue to sacrifice virgins to the volcano.)
4) Ignorance breeds fear. Overconfidence breeds ignorance. Americans are embarrassingly overconfident and there are plenty of studies...
5) Distractions... again appeal to "base emotions" but also combined with the promotion selfishness (also a result of a socially engineered consumer society.) This greatly increases willful ignorance. Also, it adds to a feeling of powerlessness due to the lack of participation and observation. All that combined with the never ending list of pleasant escapes from reality.... One doesn't even need to try to make things unpleasant to get people to tune out; but they DO often resort to making issues unpleasant and more so today as things get worse to keep people retreating back to their escapes (which is a huge industry in itself, which doesn't have to advertize misery; that is free... and luckily for them it is a relative perspective for the human brain.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Read "Bin Laden - The Man Who Declared War on America. This was published in 1999, before 9/11, and as a result is a reasonably hype-free biography. It quotes bin Laden during the years he was building up his organization.
I'm doing this from memory, but one of the key points bin Laden made to his followers was that, to defeat the United States, it had to be weakened first. He was writing this in the 1990s. (Situation in the 1990s: USSR was history, previous US war was four days of total victory over Iraq in Kuwait, balanced budget in US, US economically dominant in world, most of world wanted to be more like US.) He discusses how to weaken the US. Bin Laden specifically discusses how to make the US paranoid and more heavy-handed, and thus a less competent opponent and a less desirable alternative to Islam. That was the goal of his terror campaign.
Mission accomplished.