Does anyone have a clue what made and continues to make Americans

[Thtwudbeme]

so damned paranoid?

Seriously...it's not just "terrorists," or "Foreigners," it's even more bizarre than that:

Women's right to have a safe abortion.

Affordable healthcare for everyone.

"Other" religions.

Teachers that can speak in a classroom.

It's been like this for awhile too...this is nothing new. I think the paranoia can go back at least 150 years....possibly more.

What in the hell are we so afraid of? What made this country so damned chickenshit?

I sure wish I could get a conservative to answer this question; I am interested in both the intelligent thoughtful answers, but I would also like to hear the knee jerk crap they spew. Even that might give me a clue.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

1. Willful ignorance.

I've seen it all my life.

But I don't understand it. Sycophancy to corporate-sponsored politics is sickening to me. It truly is chickenshit to not know how to think for one's self . . . and be proud of it. Ya hear me, ditto-heads???

Ironically, I think our finest hour . . . was in the depths of the Depression. The New Deal was brilliant. And it was unabashed Socialism. I love looking at photos from the Farm Works Administration archives--there was such energy and hope being wrought from such total misery. America was truly great for about seven years . . .

[Hutzpa]

7. Just Wondering....

how long will it that a better government to change all this?


:think: :shrug:

[CrazyOrangeCat]

8. no way to know . . .

. . . just keep sluggin' away at the bastards.

[stillcool]

2. The Advertising Industry?...

or just capitalism....where one must buy, buy, buy, to avert those
Future
Events...that
Appear
Real

[Cleita]

3. We don't have a government for the people anymore.

Our laws are more and more being changed and rewritten to protect the interests of business and nothing else.

If you could do one thing to improve the situation and swing the pendulum back so to speak, start supporting labor. If you don't have a union in your place of employment, go find one or create one.

This one mission alone will bring all those other points you mentioned to the forefront, where you will have the muscle and strength of numbers to attack them and solve them one by one.

Let business know that they are a tool for the people not a means to an end.

[Individualist]

4. Their teevees repeatedly tell them to be afraid,

and they all know the teevee doesn't lie. :eyes: Tonight CBS is showing one of their made for TV movies entitled "Time Bomb". It's about terrorists attempting to blow up a football stadium, and the "hero" is a Homeland Security employee. Gotta keep the sheeple scared, even by means of so-called entertainment. :grr:

[mandyky]

5. We _DID_ have a break in the 60's

from this.

We need to form our own version of "focus on the family" and get the Rush, Sean H., Bill O. and Michael Savages off of the radio, and get voices of reason back - like Phil Donahue, Keith Olberman, Bill Moyers, and Walter Cronkite.

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. It goes all the way back to the beginning.

Back to before the Revolution. Back to the Puritans and Separatists who settled along the Eastern seaboard in the seventeenth century. They were representative of an ideology (Calvinism) that continues, in various forms, to be prevalent among religious fundamentalists and political conservatives, and one that has done much to shape the so-called "American character". They fled Britain to escape persecution for deviating from Anglican orthodoxy, or to avoid retribution for their support of Cromwell after Charles II regained the throne, and brought their fears and prejudices with them--the Calvinist doctrine of predestination of the elect, for instance, which says that material wealth is a sign of God's favour and that poverty is just punishment for idleness and sin. And independence of thought was seen as a heresy, to be punished by being put in stocks, or whipped, or outcast.

These early Calvinists gave birth later to the Baptists (an offshoot of Presbyterianism), the Pentecostals and other "charismatic" movements (mostly splintered from the Baptists) and so on; they are the direct antecedents of today's fundamentalists, and thanks to the right's co-opting of fundamentalists to increase their base, of much in modern American conservatism as well.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

9. Yes, Puritanism is very much alive and well.

And driving big-ass SUV's . . .