Note to Karl Rove and his Flying Monkey minions:
That "Fear" thing you've been peddling for the past five years? Over with. Done. That is, like, sooo 20 minutes ago. Pre-9/12 mindset, and all that. That Dog Don't Hunt. That ship has sailed. It's not playing in Peoria. You might be sellin', but we're not buyin'.
Hasta la vista, baby. Ta-Ta For Now! See ya - wouldn't wanna be ya. Sucks to be you-ooo! Try the next country. I gave at the office. Negatron, Pigpen. No quiero Terror Alert Level.
There's an old saying in Reality Land - I know it's in Reality Land, probably wherever it is you live, too - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - aww, hell:
Go fuck yourselves, motherfuckers.
End Of Message
(Also available at My Left Wing)
America is waking up. Americans are no longer listening to the will-sapping blatherings of the Republican Grima Wormtongues, the traitorous venal cowards who counsel Fear, mistrust and powerlessness.
Fuck that, Americans have declared.
Fear is an important survival tool for the human species. Fear is one of our most primal emotions, originating deep in our brains, in that part of the central nervous system common to complex vertebrates: the amygdala. Fear causes us to make behavioral changes in response to life-endangering threats that we perceive in our environments. It's one of the reasons we still exist as a species and that we have achieved our current state as King of the evolutionary Hill.
But most fears in our modern society are cooked up - either within our own fevered imaginations, or by others - and serve no survival purpose whatever. There are very few true life-and-death situations that confront modern humans in developed countries; thus Fear as a survival mechanism is, for most people, a vestigial response, a mostly useless holdover from a long-distant past.
Hey! Speaking about Republicans -
Say, didja know that the Terror Alert Level® spiked last week? Yeah, all the way to Red! Huh - you probably didn't even notice. Or how about a few days later, when it went back down to Orange - didja catch that? No. No, I didn't think so - I'll bet you didn't miss a beat. Hmph. Chances are, nothing in your life changed at all last week: you still went to the store, you still filled your car up with gas, you still watched reruns of "Desperate Housewives" on TV, you still barbecued hamburgers in your backyard on Saturday, you still took your kids to the park on Sunday.
No, not much changed, I'll bet. Outwardly, anyway. But if Karl Rove is doing his job right, what might have been different was that your anxiety level might have been raised juuust a little bit. You might have noticed - if you had been paying really close attention - a vague sense of impending disaster, an undefined unease, a small - very small - twinge of fear that wasn't there previously, nibbling away at the edges of your consciousness.
For the Republicans pulling the levers behind our country's National Insecurity Apparatus, your response was perfectly in line with their intent. They don't want to see too much outward change in your day-to-day behavior, they don't want to see you transforming your habits - your shopping habits, your driving habits, your viewing habits - they don't want you to feel as though you've had to make a sacrifice to accommodate the "change" - from Yellow to Red!!! - that they would like to have you believe has occurred in the level of risk to our nation's security.
They don't want you to do anything differently in your everyday life. They only want one small change in your behavior, and they only need it every couple of years or so, in November. What they want, of course, is for you to go into that voting booth and vote for a Republican, because you're terrified.
For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true.
-Titus Lucretius Carus
The Terror Alert Levels® are a joke. What are we, on a kiddie ride at the county fair or something?: "You must be THIS terrified to be a good American citizen." Fuck having somebody tell me how terrified I should be in order to be a Good American. (Is that anything like a Good German?) Fuck having somebody lie to my congressman so they will be terrified enough to send American troops and American money overseas to be squandered - WASTED! - in an illegal, ill-advised, ill-conceived and ill-executed adolescent, compensating, circle jerk.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
- Helen Keller
"OMG, like, what's the Terror Alert Level® today?? Orange?? OMG, I don't have, like, anything to wear with that!!"
What do they think - we're kids at a magic show or something, f'cryin' out loud? "Ooh, Look over here! No, no! - not over there - over here, over HERE! Ooh, look, here's a BOOGEYMAN!" What, do they hope we won't notice that so much of our country is in shambles: the economy is in shambles, the environment is in shambles, our armed forces are in shambles, our Constitution is in shambles - did I mention the environment is in shambles? - healthcare is in shambles, New Orleans is in shambles -
Gimme a fucking break.
The Terror Alert Levels® are laughable, especially to those of us who survived the darkest days of the Cold War. We had thousands - literally THOUSANDS - of nuclear warheads pointed at us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, for 40 years. Every day, we faced the real possibility of the imminent annihilation of America, Americans and the American way of life, which would have taken only a matter of minutes. I mean if today's Terror Alert Levels® go from Blue to Red, during the Cold War we would've needed them to go through friggin' White Hot, and they would've been up there almost all the time.
.
During World War II and the Cold War, Americans had good reason to fear - but we chose not to. We were blessed to have leaders during those times who demonstrated true courage and strength. Our leaders wisely chose to remind us that the path of Fear was not the path that America and Americans should choose to travel. They told us what we knew to be true: that Fear - inchoate, unreasoning fear - would paralyze us, and lead us to the destruction of everything that is best about America.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified, terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt (first inaugural address, March 4, 1933)
The facts of [the Japanese attacks] speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt (speech to Congress, December 8, 1941)
After we were suddenly and deliberately attacked by Japan, and 2,400 of our soldiers and sailors were killed, FDR spoke to a joint session of Congress on a day like none ever before seen by Americans. We were facing the combined military might of Japan, Germany and Italy - among them, the most powerful warmaking machine the world had ever seen, by far - but FDR's message was not one of Fear - it was one of calmness, resolve, and clarity of purpose. No mention was made of hate. FDR let us make up our own minds.
During the Cold War, after an initial phase of semi-panic in which bomb shelters became the latest in home décor, we eventually gave up the "Duck and Cover" drills, common sense prevailed, and Americans got on with their lives. This Republican administration, in contrast, is hell-bent on preserving the artifacts of panic that they have foisted on the American public, no matter how laughable and - let's be honest - absurd they have been revealed to be. It is long past time that we kick these Fear mongers and their Fear mongering ways to the curb, and adopt a common-sense approach to dealing with domestic threats of mass violence.
Reality has a well-known liberal bias. To a Republican banking on ersatz Fear to save his sorry ass at the polls in November - like, say, Joe Lieberman - that's bad news.The Republicans have no use for real fear, that kind of fear that keeps the soldier in al-Anbar province alive as he patrols vigilantly down an empty street, fully aware of his surroundings - Situational Awareness, they call it - ready to take action in response to anything that might threaten his life. That kind of fear - the kind that keeps us alive, that has kept us alive for millennia, that has made it possible for the most vigilant and aware representatives of our species to keep winning the evolutionary lottery - has a utility, a purpose, a definable value for each and every member of the human race.
Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Have I ever felt that fear? That feeling that has no words, but which is as certain as death? That metallic taste in the mouth, that razor-honed sharpening of all of the senses, that searing into memory of every aspect of the moment with such clarity that the minute textures, the smallest sounds, the very smell of the world around you in those few seconds is something that you will never forget? The kind of fear that focuses your mind so wonderfully? Yes, I have. I have felt true fear, the fear that comes from knowing that you could very well be leaving this mortal coil within the next few seconds.
Yes, I have known true fear. And no, it's not the same weak-ass shit that Republicans most desire for us to be in thrall to. The only Fear they're comfortable dealing in is that inchoate fear that has as its object not a real, immediate and identifiable threat to our physical well-being, but rather a shapeless, generalized threat. It's really not Fear, it's anxiety.
Rather than be specific about the fact that, in fact, there are people out there who want to kill us, who do, in fact, hate us, and then Doing Something Specific About Those Specific People, Republicans would rather have us trembling in fear at the very thought of "Terrorists," The Concept.
This Republican government doesn't want us to get busy doing something at home to really do anything to make us actually safer from the real threat of acts of mass violence. It wants us to sit home and do nothing, nothing except be afraid.
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
- Dale Carnegie
The reason they don't want us to do anything is because they know that once we do, once we start making real sacrifices, we will start demanding results. Better to have us wander around in a fog of undefined fear so that we can be led around by the nose and told what is best for us, and how as Good Americans we should support everything the Republicans want to do - otherwise, we're - GASP! - helping the terrorists.
Fuck that.
Americans are figuring out that all of this Terror Alert bullshit is just that: bullshit. They're tired of being played for fools, of being made jumpy every time the Republicans get in trouble and need their asses dragged out of the fire. They're freakin' fed up with being made to jump through hoops when there are real dangers in the world that need attending to.
It's one thing for my beagle to be jumpy - to run up to the front window howling at every imagined bump, knock, rustling or disturbance, to be on heightened alert, itching for an excuse to run and howl, and raise her hackles. It's a nuisance, but it doesn't throw off the important work she has to do in life.
America, on the other hand, has very Important Work to do. We cannot afford to be sent scrambling, over and over and over again, to the front of the house on a silly whim, howling at nothing, our Terror Alert Levels© raised to Orange because someone across the street slammed a car door, or because in our fevered jumpiness we mistook the closing of a cabinet for the sound of a stranger approaching our door.
We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason . . . [W]e are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular. This is no time . . . to keep silent.
- Edward R. Murrow
Yet that is precisely the behavior that the Republican Fear-mongers want us to exhibit. The Important Work that we have to do includes holding our government officials accountable for the state of our nation - and that is something that the people in charge of this country for the past five-and-a-half years Do. Not. Want. Instead, they want to keep us running around, howling at imaginary noises, our hackles raised, our Terror Alert Levels® on Orange - or Yellow, that will do, too - because that kind of shapeless, indefinable, targetless fear allows them to get away with all kinds of behavior that ensures the survival not of America, Americans or the American way of life, but rather that of their own small, selfish, venal, deadly interests.
Bad news for Republicans: Most Americans are smarter than my beagle.
I'll tell you what Republicans fear: Republicans fear a fearless electorate. Republicans fear citizens who open their eyes and look outward, to see what is really happening in their world, citizens who have Situational Awareness that helps keep them alive.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
- Frank Herbert, Dune (Bene Gesserit: Litany Against Fear)
The Republicans have succeeded with this Fear-mongering strategy so far largely by labeling anyone who questions it a Coward and a Traitor. The Republicans are masters at projection; that is, accusing others of the very thing that they themselves are guilty or, or are most ashamed or afraid of. They are masters at playing to those characteristics in others which are their own weaknesses. And the sad fact of the matter is, they are cowards.
Fear has its use, but cowardice has none. I may not put my hand into the jaws of a snake, but the very sight of the snake need not strike terror into me.
- Mahatma Gandhi
As fear is close companion to falsehood, so truth follows fearlessness.
A man who is afraid will do anything.
- Jawaharlar Nehru
What is it that Republicans are trying to make us afraid of? Fear of dying? Millions of Americans die every year. They die from all kinds of causes: snakebite, lightning, electrocution, infections caused by poor hospital care, traffic accidents, homicide, old age, cancer, food poisoning. Almost none dies from acts of terrorism outside of a war zone. Every year for the past 10 years, lightning has caused the deaths of an average of 49 people in the United States. Yet in spite of that, we are not encouraged to maintain our Terror Alert Level©s for Being Struck By Lightning at Orange or Yellow.
Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are stiffened.
- Billy Graham
No, the galling Fear that Republicans like to spread is the kind of fear that does not empower, but rather, disempowers. And that is what the Fear-mongers want. Oh, the Fear-mongers know fear, too - the kind of fear that ensures their own survival. The fear that comes from knowing that their regime cannot survive a citizenry that knows its own power and wields it at the election booth.
Fear? Fuck Fear!
Americans have no use for that kind of fear. That kind of Fear is the thing that freezes the deer in the headlights, that renders us incapable of action, that drains us of our will and our willingness to think clearly and rationally.
Rationality - the enemy of the Republican Fear Machine. Don't think!, the Machine screams at you. Keep running! Run! Run! Run! The Boogeyman is coming to get you!
BOO!
They're telling you scary campfire stories so you'll cower in your tent all night instead of coming out to see how beautiful the stars are, and to listen to the quiet of the forest.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death, I will fear no evil
- Psalms 23:4
They don't want you to know that so much more is available and possible, that you can expect and experience and demand so much more from your life and your government than you have become accustomed to receiving in the past five-and-a-half years, that there are, in fact, stars in the night sky, and trees in the forest, and places where the rivers are clean and not choked with poison from mining and manufacturing and corporate farming. They don't want you to feel free to dream, to create new possibilities for yourself and your children, because that would interfere with their plans to expand the lowest strata of society while slamming the gates shut to entry into their rarified, exclusive, right-thinking uppermost stratum.
And, as the recent overpowering stench wafting around George Allen reminds us: Fear has an uglier brother, Racism; both are spawn of Ignorance.
Fear of The Other is what feeds Racism; it is what makes war and murder and abuse possible. Fear of The Unknown can fuel a need for the imposition of order at all costs.
Fear can serve humanity, if it is used correctly, and sparingly.
Americans want their government to keep them safe. We want our leaders to go after real Bad Guys Out There, who are looking to harm us. But we are not so stupid as to continue to be played for fools by the Fear-mongering Republicans in power.
I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know some people are terrified of the bomb. But then some people are terrified to be seen carrying a Modern Screen magazine. Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.
- Bob Dylan
During the Vietnam War, a bumper sticker of the day had a stark, simple message. FUCK WAR, it read. As Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner pointed out in their book, The Soft Revolution, the jarring coarseness of the first word was mitigated by the sober reality of the second.
Well, I say, Fuck Fear. Fuck Fear, and the Four Horses he rode in on.
Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no! . . . And it ain't over now. 'Cause when the goin' gets tough . . the tough get goin'! Who's with me? Let's go!
[runs out, alone; then returns]
What the fuck happened to the Delta I used to know? Where's the spirit? Where's the guts, huh? "Ooh, we're afraid to go with you Bluto, we might get in trouble." Well just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I'm not gonna take this!
- John Blutarsky
Am I going to let Fear affect the way I live? Fuck, no. Am I going to let it affect the way I vote? Fuck, no.
Oh, and P.S. to Rove and Flying Chimps: I have known true fear - bone-chilling, adrenalin-pumping, life-threatening existential fear - and this ersatz, cooked-up, crappy, insipid brand of Fear that you and your vampirish friends have been hawking like snake oil off the back of a wagon, isn't It. This thin gruel of high-fructose corn-syrupy Fear Lite that you've tried to get us to become hooked on just doesn't cut it - never has with me, and doesn't anymore with the overwhelming majority of Americans.
So, as I said -
Go fuck yourselves.
Game's over. We call bullshit.