A Politics Of Fear (Bush and Grace)

[madmusic]

http://www.jc2m.co.uk/Issue1/Altheide.pdf">Notes Towards A Politics Of Fear (PDF, and excellent!)

David L. Altheide
Arizona State University

"A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign
revolutions alike without fear." Franklin D. Roosevelt

“People react to fear, not love—they don’t teach that in Sunday School,
but it’s true.” Richard Nixon

“Al Qaeda is to terror what the Mafia is to crime.” George W. Bush

I wish to chart the conceptual terrain of crime, terrorism, and victim by examining the
connection between the mass media and the politics of fear, or decision-makers’
promotion and use of audience beliefs and assumptions about danger, risk and fear in
order to achieve certain goals....

snip

The politics of fear promotes
attacking a target (for example, crime), terrorism, anticipates further victimisation,
curtails civil liberties, and stifles dissent as being non-responsive to citizen needs or
even “unpatriotic.” The Homeland Security Office advised the American people to
buy duct tape and plastic sheeting as a barrier to terrorism. This advisory had little to
do with “chemical protection” and much to do with the politics of fear.

snip

‘Since September 11, that politics has followed two distinct tracks: First,
state officials and media pundits have defined and interpreted the objects
of Americans' fears -- Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism -- in antipolitical
or non-political terms, which has raised the level of popular
nervousness; and, second, these same elites have generated a fear of
speaking out not only against the war and US foreign policy but also
against a whole range of established institutions.’

I'm afraid my previous post was too something or other. Please read this! Nothing explains better how BushCo and the Right gained and maintains power.

[madmusic]

1. FearWatch: The Fear-Mongering Hall of Shame

Condi made herself a sure-fire first ballot inductee back in '03 with her ominous pre-war warning about Saddam: "There will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Cheney ensured his enshrinement during the 2004 vice-presidential debate: "The biggest threat we face today is the possibility of terrorists smuggling a nuclear weapon or a biological agent into one of our own cities and threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans."

And who'll ever forget Bush's classic 2003 State of the Union performance where he hit for the panic cycle, enumerating all the ways Saddam could reign death and destruction on us, including: "biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax -- enough doses to kill several million people"; "more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin -- enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure"; "as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. In such quantities, these chemical agents could also kill untold thousands."

But despite these legendary fear-inducing feats, Team Terror is not content to rest on its laurels. Indeed, the 2006 season is proving that the Bush Hall of Shamers are in top form.

This month has already given us some fear-mongering for the ages. There was Bush's 9/11 chat with Matt Lauer -- a shoo-in Hall of Shame performance in which the president offered an up-close-and-extremely-personal response to Lauer's questions about torture: "Matt, I'm just telling you, what this government has done is to take steps necessary to protect you and your family... We're at war. This is people that want to come and kill your families... This isn't make-believe." Gulp.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/fearwatch-the-fearmonge_b_29737.html