Overcoming the Culture of Fear

Franklin D. Roosevelt at his first inaugural address encouraged Americans to stand up to that “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
It may have taken a few more generations, but America finally lost the war against that “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror".

We've been afraid before, but this time its different.
In the 1950's American society united in a fear of nuclear annihilation. During WWII the country's common fear of fascism united the nation in the war effort.
However, today our fear divides us. We fear our government. We fear strangers. We fear our neighbors. More than anything else, we fear things that aren't there, and its tearing our society apart.

An alien watching primetime television could be forgiven for thinking that the United States was undergoing a tsunami of serial killers and terrorists. Then there are shows like The Following, where a cult of serial killers act like a terrorist cell. On every station there is a plethora of sick, twisted, graphic murders.
Those fictional serial killers usually target children and women. So is it any surprise that Americans today are terrified for our children? Especially when we are told that a child goes missing every 90 seconds.
That's a terrifying number! No wonder parents are freaked out.

The problem with the 90 seconds number is that it implies something that isn't true.

There are lots of reasons why a child may go missing - they may have run away, or failed to come home on time - and cases like this may be worrying, but they are very different from the case of a child being kidnapped by a stranger in the street.
Just 115 of the 797,500 children were subject to what Finkelhor and his co-authors define as a "stereotypical" kidnapping - that is, they were abducted by a stranger and detained overnight, perhaps permanently, or taken at least 50 miles away.
In fact, almost half the children recorded in the study were what the authors call "benign missing". That means their parent or guardian thought they were missing, but they soon turned up.

Every 90 seconds is a lot more scary than once every three days.
What's more, the data from the study is 15 years old, when the crime rate was significantly higher than today.
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Just as staggering is the fact that men are 76% of violent crime victims, not women.

You would never know that from TV shows, of which 66% contain violence, the vast majority of which contains violent acts without remorse. You would think that white women made up the bulk of murder victims.
In a 2009 study violence against women on TV grew 120% over a five year period and 400% against adolescent women. 92% of these attacks were explicitly depicted.
But when you look at the real numbers you discover that white women are the safest race and gender.

It's not that a lot of men don't die on TV. Legions of male cops, soldiers, heavies and henchmen have met their doom on primetime. It's just that they are expected to die.

The violent crime rate in America has fallen to its lowest level since 1978. Violent crimes are happening at half the 1993 rate.
In fact, the violent crime rate is about to hit a century low.

This is fairly preliminary data, but Rick Nevin reports that if current trends keep up, we'll end 2013 with the murder rate in America at its lowest rate in over a century.

Some people refuse to believe the FBI statistics. It's understandable because we are hardwired to retain fear long after any scary experience. However, surveys show the exact same downward trend.

The National Crime Victimization Survey reports that the rate of violent victimizations has declined by 67 percent since 1993. This reflects a 70 percent decline in rape and sexual assault; a 66 percent decline in robbery; a 77 percent decline in aggravated assault; and a 64 percent decline in simple assault.

The world is “more dangerous than it has ever been.”

That's what Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last year during a Senate hearing. More dangerous than during the Cold War or WWII.
That's pretty scary, right? I mean we have ISIS and al-Qaeda, and lots of other scary people out there. Just watch the news for Gawd Sakes!

News is about things that happen, not things that don’t happen. We never see a reporter saying to the camera, “Here we are, live from a country where a war has not broken out”—or a city that has not been bombed, or a school that has not been shot up. As long as violence has not vanished from the world, there will always be enough incidents to fill the evening news. And since the human mind estimates probability by the ease with which it can recall examples, newsreaders will always perceive that they live in dangerous times.

We spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the military every year to fight terrorists, despite the fact that year after year more Americans die from lightening strikes than terrorism. Your chances of being killed by a terrorist are about one in 20 million.
Of course the media and politicians tell us a very different story.

The number of wars are considerably less than a few decades ago. What's more they aren't as bloody as they have been.

It's not just the number and intensity of wars that have declined. It's the overall level of violence as well.

England, Canada, and most other industrialized countries have also seen their homicide rates fall in the past decade. Among the 88 countries with reliable data, 67 have seen a decline in the past 15 years.

Even places famous for crime have seen unprecedented declines in murder.

Bogotá, Colombia has witnessed a fivefold decline in homicides in the last 20 years.
Murders in Medellín, Colombia have dropped 85% in the same two decades.
In São Paolo murders are down 70% in a decade.
In Rio de Janeiro they are down almost 2/3rd in five years.
In Russia they are down 46%. In South Africa the murder rate has been cut in half.

Consequences of our Culture of Fear

It's easy to blame all this manufactured fear on some sort of conspiracy to control the public, but the real causes are much more pedestrian.
The media pushes out the fear simply to get ratings so they can keep their jobs.

As networks battle for ratings and newspapers grasp at disappearing readers, the urge to lead with sensational stories grows....
Television shows seem almost single-mindedly intent on triggering our anxieties—and tend to lay the blame squarely on those fools who were not fearful enough. In a recent episode of CBS’ Criminal Minds, a pair of grief-stricken parents blubbered in front of the agents sent to recover their abducted son. The father, it seems, had argued that the 5-year-old ought to be allowed to walk to a friend’s house . . . alone. “I thought we were babying him,” he moans, as the aggrieved mother issues a stony, reproachful stare.

You also see the fear hype in politics today, and that naturally triggers a paranoid response, but once again the pedestrian reasons make more sense.
Corporate ownership of the modern political process doesn't allow the politicians much wiggle-room for bold changes in the system. Or even the ability to address critical social problems.
So without the traditional tools of politics to motivate their political base to vote - the ability to inspire them with bold initiatives - they are forced to use other methods.

In a telling preelection episode of Comedy Central’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart, reporter John Oliver dove into the crowds at campaign rallies for then–­Democratic candidate Barack Obama and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. With total aplomb, citizens at each rally expressed their fear, even terror, as to what would happen if their candidate’s opponent were to be elected. Oliver’s conclusion? “There’s no red America, no blue America. There’s just one scared shitless America.”
..
Savvy politicians understand exactly how and when to exploit these tendencies. “In conditions when conventional political ideologies fail to inspire, there is a temptation to resort to the politics of fear,” writes Alex Gourevitch in the Winter 2008 edition of the journal n+1. “The hope is that the quest for security, rather than anything higher, can become a unifying political principle in its own right.”

Fearmongering simply to win an election often works, but is harmful when it becomes the primary tool of the system, which it has.
Even more disturbing is that the American public demands the fearmongering from its elected officials. Much like public's commitment to the false idea that the world is getting more dangerous, and an irrational rejection of facts that show otherwise (on both the Republican and Democratic sides of the aisle), no politician could possibly get elected these days if he told the American public that their fears were misplaced.

“The political calculus always favors the politics of fear,” says Gardner. The rhetoric is so dominant that, until just recently, to simply reject it—to declare that the public’s fears are perhaps partially unfounded, if not at the very least answering to miscalculated priorities—would amount to political suicide.

A lot of people have written about how media violence desensitizes people. Other speculate that is causes violence. Both claims are controversial.
For some reason few people have spent as much time drawing a much more logical conclusion:

Too much television/movie/game violence makes people develop an unfounded (and possibly unconscious) belief that there is more violence in society than there actually is.

Is it really so hard to believe that we are conditioning ourselves to fear? Scientists have already shown that there are two paths in the brain for fear: one conscience and one subconscious.
It's not that our fear isn't real. It's very real. The problem is that our reasons to be afraid are imaginary, but have real world consequences.

Consider how our mostly media manufactured fear of child abduction prevents children from playing outside, but doesn't save them from a sedentary lifestyle which causes a whole host of physical and emotional health problems.

It's easy to attribute some people's obsession with guns on paranoia, but isn't an unfounded fear of danger from violence just a more mild version of paranoia?
So while the general public becomes more and more irrationally fearful of being a victim of violence, some turn to guns for safety. On an emotional level it makes sense.
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It can also go a long ways toward explaining why cops are shooting more citizens, even while they are safer than ever before.
They watch the same cop shows we do, which depict cops being killed by the score.
The news media loves hyping the fear.
Two years ago the NY Times told us that police being killed on duty was going up. Three years ago MSNBC reported a "war on cops going on".
One Texas sheriff told NBC that "I think it's a hundred times more likely today that an officer will be assaulted compared to twenty, thirty years ago." These sorts of claims are rarely questioned.

Just last year the St. Louis Police were complaining about being outgunned.

“We’re outgunned out there all the time,” said Jeff Roorda of the St. Louis Police Officers Association. “The thugs out there have dangerous and sophisticated weapons.”

He obviously never mentioned that his department has military-grade weapons.

The reality for cops is much different.

The number of fatalities of U.S. law enforcement officers in 2013 is the lowest in 54 years and the number dying in firearms-related incidents is the lowest since the 1800s, according to a preliminary report by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.

That's the lowest number of police officers killed in the line of duty since 1959, despite the population of the country doubling.

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Of course there are other factors involved, and we can and should debate how much of an influence each of those factors influence the trends.
But shouldn't we take a moment to consider that maybe, just maybe, the cops are telling the truth? That time and time again they were afraid for their lives.
Irrationally afraid? Yes, most likely. But afraid nonetheless.
Consider that society in general is irrationally afraid these days, we are hardly the ones to hold that against them.
That doesn't excuse them for killing unarmed people, but it does put it into a different context.

According to every TV show and politician running for office, the solution to our exploding violent crime rate, the one that doesn't exist except in our minds, has always been locking people up, but studies show that mass incarceration doesn't work.
However, that hasn't stopped us from trying anyway.

I remember how Cold War Warriors used to point out the size of the population and the brutality and torture in Soviet gulags as proof that the Soviet Union wasn't free.
What does it say about America that we put people in prison at the same rate as at the peak of Stalin's rule?
And as for brutality, 1 in 10 prisoners are raped.
As for torture, at any one time around 80,000 prisoners are in solitary confinement, often for years at a time.

We are paying a very heavy price for our culture of fear. We've created a society that is increasingly intolerant, increasingly isolated, increasingly less free, all in the name of slaying demons that don't exist except in our minds.

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I'm gonna drop this on the GOS in a little.

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shaharazade's picture

it's an excellent diary. I 'fear' however that many at dkos believe as Obama said 'This is a dangerous world'. Misdirected and unhinged fear on every level is carefully pumped out at the US populace daily. You might get a lot of grief because FDR is a trigger that brings out the he was a dangerous, racist, fat cat, Dr. Commie Rat. Fear and hate keeps the game in play as these days everybody has boogie men hiding under their beds. The Russians are coming again and home invaders and 'terrist's who are gonna kill yer family'. Better not let your kids out as the internet map of known sex offender says there are a lot of them in your area. 'Keeping us safe' by stirring up irrational fear is working well for the real scary monsters that do mean us harm.

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One group is the anti-cop group. I don't justify the cop shootings in any way. But I don't say its because of racism. It's because of irrational fear, and some won't want to hear that.

I've pointed out that the level of rapes are dropping in past diaries, and another DKos group doesn't want to hear that. They would prefer to hold onto their fear, even to the point of saying the numbers are wrong. (sort of like the anti-science crowd on the right)

And then I say that the gun nut crowd is making a logical decision from an emotional standpoint. Although the emotions are based on an irrational reason. Some won't want to hear that either.

Basically what you have is a whole world of groups that will be offended when you deny that their personal irrational fear is any different or more important from another group's irrational fears.

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snoopydawg's picture

How else do you explain the percentage of blacks vs white people who are stopped and frisked, pulled over, and killed when they are unarmed? Or ticketed for piddly assed misdemeanors.
There have been many videos of white people who are actually armed and attack cops, but aren't killed,but are arrested instead.
Plus, there are numerous accounts of cop's texting about n*gger, thugs, monkeys and other derogatory terms.
I agree with you about TV shows hing up the terrorist threats, especially the NCIS shows. And others.
And the bogus war of terror hyping up the fear of terrorists that threaten our freedoms or if we don't fight them over there, they will come here and kill us all in our beds.
Our freedoms were taken away from us after this bogus war of terror by our own government when they passed the patriot act and removed Habeous Corpous.
Over half of americans believe that it's ok to fight, kill and drone the people in the Middle East.
I've seen so many comments that say we should just nuke them all.
The US created the clusterfuck in the Middle East by invading and committing coups for over a hundred years. MLK was right, the US is the greatest purveyer of violence and most countries believe that the US is the greatest threat to the world.
Good diary.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

gulfgal98's picture

This is one really good diary. I will wander over there to give you a tip and a recommend too.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Roger Fox's picture

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FDR 9-23-33, "If we cannot do this one way, we will do it another way. But do it we will.

Unabashed Liberal's picture

which is why it so heavily permeates the progressive community.

I was appalled, and to some degree, still am, when I first observed this several years ago.

The only way to break this fever is to "get the truth out."

The question is, "How do we overcome the corporate and Dem Party propaganda machine," in order to push back on the (big) lies which the propagate in order to keep them in a perpetual state of fear.

I'm still stymied, that's for sure.

My first inclination is to flee (blogs like DKos). But I recently decided that I've got to remain there on the margins, in order to push back (in comments) on the gross policy misinformation that is spewed there on a daily basis--especially regarding social insurance programs.

[IOW, as much as I truly would love to 'sing only to the choir,' I realize that it has its limitations.]

For instance, there are so many flat-out misstatements/misunderstandings of policy regarding veterans and the Veterans Administration at DKos (I've spent decades working with them)--by veterans, or those who claim to be vets--that, at times, it is difficult to even attempt to communicate with this community--even when you see that they have been mislead on a veterans issue/policy. (by Democrats)

My only thought is that there must be some Vet Advocates (Democratic friendly) that are feeding many of these folks talking points, in order to cover some of the Dem Party's toxic legislative actions of late. And that most these guys are not doing their homework, but taking everything at face value.

Fear is an indispensable tool--especially for the Democratic Party.

For one thing, it helps the Dem Establishment keep a somewhat disparate Base of constituents/interest groups on the same page, and, in line.

Thanks for doing your part to illuminate the issue. And thanks for this excellent diary!

[I can never find anything over there. Please let us know if you cross-post this diary.]

Mollie

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

gulfgal98's picture

Real leadership does things because they are the right things to do, not the popular things. The entire Democratic party has become a fear filled bunch of pansies. Hillary Clinton's campaign thus far is one of avoidance or fear of taking real stands. She has yet to take a real policy stand on anything, but instead is relying upon polling and her 200 advisers to figure out a way to triangulate around them. No one needs polls to tell them what should be the right side of the issues unless they are fearful of their corporate masters. Barack Obama appeared to show leadership on the campaign trail, but ended up just another lying triangulater. When I see Bernie Sanders (in general) and Elizabeth Warren (on economic issues), I see fearless leadership.

I think we might see less fear among the public if our leaders showed more fearless and decisive leadership in supporting the citizens of this country instead of bowing down to the oligarchs.

It is weird to me as a child of the 50's and 60's having been through "duck and cover" drills and having an air raid siren posted directly across the street from our house to see just how much fear there is with parents today. We lived near the edge of my elementary school district in a lower income neighborhood (GI bill houses) which meant I had a long ways to ride my bike to school. My parents never considered driving me to and from school every day like so many parents do now.

All this fear mongering translates into paralysis for the citizens of this country, but then perhaps that is exactly what it is intended to do.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

My parents never considered driving me to and from school every day like so many parents do now.

As a child of the 70's, I remember playing outside with the neighborhood kids until our midnight curfew. I remember having to walk the 3 miles to school even when it was 20 degrees below zero (that's not just a story of the 'ol days).

It really struck home when I was in the Peace Corps. Where I was stationed there was no culture of fear. Just a lot of poverty.
The thing was, there was also only 8 hours of electricity a day, so kids staying home and watching TV was not an option most of the time. Neither way video games.
The kids would run around the streets in packs all day and most of the night and no one cared.
I remember sitting down to dinner one night with my host family and big group of the neighborhood kids came running through the house chasing one another, and no one even stopped eating to say anything. You see where I lived no one bothered to lock the front doors.

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gulfgal98's picture

You gave us a picture that every American should learn about. I am not just talking about the abject poverty, but also about community even in such harsh conditions.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

shaharazade's picture

it is exactly what the pumped out fear is intended to do, including the big brother is watching NSA. The RW wing of my family (thank God a small but vocal contingency) is constantly telling me that our kids are in danger, their livelihood is endangered by moochers and losers and that the rest of the world is out to get us. They watch Cop's, they fear liberal commie values, and they believe in the screw or get screwed 'world as we find it'. losers in this vicious cruel system have made bad choices and why should I help them. They fear the displaced masses of humans globally who are going to take what theirs. This is freedom.

They even fear the poor as they will take whatever money you have worked for. No steak, TV or ciggies for the welfare queens and kings. Punitive measures to the losers so that they can assure themselves that the unworthy are not going to take their money or future money they might accrue. No one in this fearful branch of the family is particularly religious and yet they justify their mean spirited response to real populism and a just economy in strange to me rationalizations. The Horatio Alger myth is alive and well and bolsters their fears of future and current dangers from those that threaten their mythological glorification of 'free market' unfettered capitalism.

Why do they believe that money accrued, a man made concept=freedom or democracy. What a strange concept that allows Americans to think that the other, globally or here deserves to live in abject poverty because 'it's a dog eat dog world' and the victims are just losers. Why fear other humans that are victims of a mad world built on greed and a denial of human rights. I realize I have strayed from the topic of fear but I fear that people in the US who fear so many things are living in a dream of 'security' that has never existed and never will.

I was the stand in honorary grandmother for a creative neighbor child of 8 who asked me to attend her schools bring your grandparent to school day recently. She freaked out when I picked her up in my funky Toyota Corella because because my car did not have a backseat child's chair or whatever and she was under a designated weight and needed to be encased in a child's seat or else she would die. It was a trip of about 20 city blocks to her school three miles max. She refused to get in to the front passenger seat with a seat belt as it was too dangerous.

She got hysterical and fearful tom the point that she would not get in the car. I said we will drive the back road off the main street and you can use the seat belt in the back seat and we will make it home safe. We drove the backstreet route at 15 mph, no traffic, a trek across Mont Tabor our local hill/ mount to our street without meeting any oncoming vehicles or any cars at all. I traumatized her with my dangerous driving and disregard of her safety. Her Dad walks her to her play dates in a neighborhood that is incontestably safe and is removed from violence or danger as much as it is possible in life on earth. It can only instill fear in a child who thinks she will die if she doesn't have her parents or a child seat to protect her from whatever her freaked out parents fear. Scary that.

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shaharazade's picture

it is exactly what the pumped out fear is intended to do, including the big brother is watching NSA. The RW wing of my family (thank God a small but vocal contingency) is constantly telling me that our kids are in danger, their livelihood is endangered by moochers and losers and that the rest of the world is out to get us. They watch Cop's, they fear liberal commie values, and they believe in the screw or get screwed 'world as we find it'. losers in this vicious cruel system have made bad choices and why should I help them. They fear the displaced masses of humans globally who are going to take what theirs. This is freedom.

They even fear the poor as they will take whatever money you have worked for. No steak, TV or ciggies for the welfare queens and kings. Punitive measures to the losers so that they can assure themselves that the unworthy are not going to take their money or future money they might accrue. No one in this fearful branch of the family is particularly religious and yet they justify their mean spirited response to real populism and a just economy in strange to me rationalizations. The Horatio Alger myth is alive and well and bolsters their fears of future and current dangers from those that threaten their mythological glorification of 'free market' unfettered capitalism.

Why do they believe that money accrued, a man made concept=freedom or democracy. What a strange concept that allows Americans to think that the other, globally or here deserves to live in abject poverty because 'it's a dog eat dog world' and the victims are just losers. Why fear other humans that are victims of a mad world built on greed and a denial of human rights. I realize I have strayed from the topic of fear but I fear that people in the US who fear so many things are living in a dream of 'security' that has never existed and never will.

I was the stand in honorary grandmother for a creative neighbor child of 8 who asked me to attend her schools bring your grandparent to school day recently. She freaked out when I picked her up in my funky Toyota Corella because because my car did not have a backseat child's chair or whatever and she was under a designated weight and needed to be encased in a child's seat or else she would die. It was a trip of about 20 city blocks to her school three miles max. She refused to get in to the front passenger seat with a seat belt as it was too dangerous.

She got hysterical and fearful to the point that she would not get in the car. I said we will drive the back road off the main street and you can use the seat belt in the back seat and we will make it home safe. It's alright we will not crash and burn. We drove the backstreet route at 15 mph, no traffic, a trek across Mont Tabor our local hill/ mount to our street without meeting any oncoming vehicles or any cars at all. I traumatized her with my dangerous driving and disregard of her safety. Her Dad walks her to her play dates in a neighborhood that is incontestably safe and is removed from violence or danger as much as it is possible in life on earth. It can only instill fear in a child who thinks she will die if she doesn't have her parents or a child seat to protect her from whatever her freaked out parents fear. Scary that.

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LapsedLawyer's picture

The only kids I see out trick or treating are either being chauffeured about by their parents who then walk them up to the door, or high school teenagers (who really don't do squat for costumes). Parties are held indoors to do "trick-or-treating" with parents and their kids from the neighborhood, but not outdoors. It's frackin' crazy.

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"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."
-- John Lennon

shaharazade's picture

or treating kids in my neighborhood. Could be that this is a dense city neighborhood of single houses and sidewalks and a lot of foot traffic. It's a real community. It's also a very 'safe' neighborhood for walking alone while female even at night. It's fun we dress up to hand out candy and over the years have seen the early arriving toddlers accompanied by their parents become teenagers straggling up to the door at about 10:00. All the kids costumes are fun and creative. The fear pumped out to lots of kids by their parents is borderline hysteria. It will be interesting to see if they grow up and carry this fear into adulthood.

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snoopydawg's picture

Government welfare have no problem with corporate welfare or the rich people's obscene tax cuts.
They believe that the rich earned their money and should be able to keep it.
One can't argue with people who think like that.
They parrot what they heat on TV.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Roger Fox's picture

Maintaining the status quo, like an economy that barely functions for 90% of us.

Or as they say, its a feature not a bug.

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FDR 9-23-33, "If we cannot do this one way, we will do it another way. But do it we will.

mimi's picture

seems to be very good considering all the graphs I can see without reading.

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Roger Fox's picture

on your piece via FB and Twitter. People I respect. Like this:

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FDR 9-23-33, "If we cannot do this one way, we will do it another way. But do it we will.

It is a good diary. Terror, terror, terror - domestic or foreign -any bogey man will do.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

mimi's picture

mind, while I am reading two books, that will help me understand of why large groups of people tend to need something to fear (and thus tend to imagine and increase fear, if not give it a mythical dimension and some historical roots to justify it). It seems they need that fear to feel they have a home and belonging and protections within their own group that will help them survive the dangers from the imagined enemy, the "them".

I think they relate to this diary's subject. In a way how the fear has to be magnified and invented. And thus even the endless production of "horror movies", which all incite our phantasies of how a clearly non existent enemy threatens our survival. We are occupied to imagine all our smart and heroic deeds we might invent as helpless victims to beat "them" those enemies. We are immersed with those images from the producers of horror movies as well, not only from the corporate TV news media that is sensationalizing any horror crime with throwing the thousands and millions and billions of numbers together with close-up images some "embedded" camera people are able to catch. A perfect industry to provide our minds with the fears, we need so much, apparently.

I can't comment, as I just started these two books, which I know will keep me glued to its content. One is called Bloodlines - From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism together with another one from the same author Yamik Volkan, Blind Trust: Large Groups and their Leaders in Times of Crisis and Terror

To me the books promise to help me a lot. Ok, will return to my book. Great diary. Thanks.

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when you came back you were going to look for a job

you write so much it is hard to imagine that you are working a job also

** the following is a recount of how the

i well recall the flap on DK when you said that Obama was a water boy for wall street

all hell broke loose

you racist, water boy is a put down of blacks

you tried to fight back but the jerks would not listen

you were in DR in the peace corps and working with blacks every day

no break for you damn fascist "water boy" for our hero

and after trying to reason with them, saying that carrying water was a general statement, you came back with the experience on another web site

i recall when I spoke out against Zionists and I was called a jew hater

then I said that I was a jew with relatives who died in the holocaust, and the response was that I was a self hating jew

and finally I gave up

**

that was during the time that I got bunches of HR for saying things about Obama

and Joanne Leon supported me "this too shall pass" - until election time when it is Dems all the way!!

You are doing an incredible educational job with the series of articles that you post on DK

you are one of the few reasons that i spend time there and have hope that there will be the necessary change

don

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mimi's picture

i recall when I spoke out against Zionists and I was called a jew hater
then I said that I was a jew with relatives who died in the holocaust, and the response was that I was a self hating jew
and finally I gave up

I didn't expect that, but it opens my eyes now even more.

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