Franklin Delano Roosevelt said it best in his first inaugural address after his election as United States President in 1933 - "We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.". He was attempting to calm a nation which had been ransacked by a near total collapse of an economy too insecurely strapped to markets which were very good at short term gain but lousy at long term prosperity. Sadly we have in many ways returned to those dangerous ways, but that's not my main point today.
I sometimes feel sorry for the folks who day in and day out only get their news from FOX "News". They certainly have a choice and broad assortment of other venues, but sadly all too often in these times folks like to get their updates on the daily proceedings digested and already filed into comfortable categories. Without sampling from an array of sources one can very quickly imagine the whole of the universe fits neatly into a narrative which conveniently meets the needs of some political power seeker or other. It's true of both sides, but to be fair and balanced, it's really really true of FOX folks.
That said, I do sometimes feel a touch of pity because they must live lives absolutely filled with terror. For years now they've imagined their government (which they have a shaky and limited understanding of sadly) has been taken away and now serves the purposes of those disrespectful dusky folks who steadily fill in the spaces all around them in stores and parks and even at work. They imagine women have escaped the proper confines of Biblical heterodoxy and now gambol day and night with little regard to the men they trample on or the children they abort weekly. They think that the United States military is weak despite its budget which dwarfs any other single nation on the planet, and that reducing that budget a fraction puts the whole nation at risk of invasion from Cuba perhaps, or maybe even North Korea or some other tiny country with a population which is a fraction of that in the U.S.
But mostly they live in terror of terror, or as they clamber to call it "Muslin Extremism". Despite statistics which prove that most of the terrorism in the world is not committed by Muslims or that the chances that any single person will ever fall victim to it are miniscule, folks nonetheless are scared witless that some bearded malcontent is just around the corner waiting to drive a knife into their heart while they shop at the local mall.
As the mongers begin the terrible drumbeats to begin the next great war we have to be especially careful to make decisions not based on fear, it is fear itself which is our greatest enemy.
Rip Off
Fox News wouldn't be allowed in the UK as broadcasters have to be unbiased - the same rule doesn't apply to newspapers which can be as biased as they like but newspapers are in terminal decline and don't have the power they did in the '80s when most of them churned out propaganda for Margaret Thatcher. Here it's not just the Muslims who are portrayed as a threat - a rising bogeyman is Russia's Vladimir Putin. What threat he actually poses is a mystery - he seems a bit of a tin-pot dictator to me.
ReplyDeleteWe still have a rule like that for "broadcast" television but cable is not subject to that limitation. Likewise on radio, the lapse of the rule made conservative kingpins like Rush Limbaugh possible. I guess at this point media is like food, folks consume what they like regardless if it's good for them.
DeletePutin is a real oddity. Russia over here is pretty much of interest only because of the nukes, but Putin is much adored by conservatives because of his seemingly manly way of dong business. The love to compare him to our president who they like to suggest is a weak sister because he is hesitant to stick troops everywhere (though he does it a lot) and because he doesn't talk in sufficiently short sentences.
A friend of mine always puts up China as the next big threat, but the last year or so has dimmed that bulb. Slow and steady is the way to do diplomacy and that kind of level-headedness is not held in high regard.
Rip Off
Well said Rip! I very much agree…And I’m in synch with Colin on Putin – he’s an awful convenient bad guy for the West…(Unrelated: Gosh, I’d like to get my hands on that Fear #5 – I had # 1 and #2 – was a sweet bunch of Atlas monster reprints.)
ReplyDeleteI wish I had been smart enough to buy more of these when I was a mere lad. I got a few, but was focused mostly on superheroes. Fear #1 I bought off the stands, but didn't get another issue for nearly a year.
DeleteRip Off
I recall on the original Bullpen Page touting the release of this 25-center, they referred to this comic as “Fright”.
ReplyDelete