Home of the brave? I don’t think so, pilgrim. Right now – despite a popular culture that still pays lip service to reckless courage – a frightening number of Americans seem to be in fear of fear itself, and are willing to suffer alarming levels of indignity, and sacrifice dangerous slices of liberty, in return for what can only be a spurious illusion of being safe. I had given this some thought and intended writing about it, but today I spotted this quote from Jack Gordon on Boing Boing…
“For two decades and counting, we citizens of the land of the free and the home of the brave have happily traded freedom for every scrap of bogus safety dangled before us. Indeed, we have devoted prodigious energy to inventing threats that demand the sacrifice of liberty, privacy and even basic human dignity. Blowing threats out of proportion is, of course, the stock in trade of TV news, whether the menace in question is a summer rainstorm or the distressing stains revealed when an investigative reporter shines ultraviolet light on a freshly laundered bed sheet at an upscale hotel. But television reflects its viewers' attitudes as well as shaping them, and clearly there exists a very large audience receptive to the never-ending theme: Life is meant, ever and always, to be safe--and you're not safe.” (Click here for the whole piece.)
Don’t get me wrong. I’m no hero. I’d have split from the Alamo on the second day after Santa Anna showed up. I have few pretentions to actual courage, but I do play the odds. I work on the principle that the chances are good I will come out of any given situation intact, but if, on the other hand, destiny has my number that’s just too bad. If I didn’t adopt this attitude of fatalism, it would be close impossible ever to step into an elevator, fly in a plane, ride in a car, ingest a narcotic, or chance a sexual encounter. Riding a motorcycle or walking in the inner city? Forget about it. I also do my level best not to have the posture of the victim. One does not want to be the limping gazelle on the outer edge of the herd when the hyenas are looking for lunch. What I don’t do is to place the slightest trust in cringing politicians (who tend to scurry to some bomb-proof bunker at the first sign of trouble), fascist officials, computer lists, or onerous and unworkable security systems to keep me from harm. I also don’t want to treat every swarthy male as a suspect and potential candidate for torture. I do note, however, how the last two wanna-be terror bombers on commercial airliners were, in fact, overcome by their plenty brave fellow passengers with no help from any professional security until the plane landed. Could it be that much of this fear is in the imagination of the media, or confined to the worshippers of Glenn Beck. In the same time that I found the Jack Gordon quote, this piece by Tom Engelhardt appeared on Common Dreams…
“The fear of terrorism has, by now, been institutionalized in our society -- quite literally so -- even if the thing we're afraid of has, on the scale of human problems, something of the will o' the wisp about it. For those who remember their Cold War fiction, it's more specter than SPECTRE. That fear has been embedded in what once was an un-American word, more easily associated with Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany: "homeland." It has replaced "country," "land," and "nation" in the language of the terror-mongers. "The homeland" is the place which terrorism, and nothing but terrorism, can violate. In 2002, that terror-embedded word got its own official government agency: the Department of Homeland Security, our second "defense" department, which has a 2010 budget of $39.4 billion (while overall "homeland security" spending in the 2010 budget reached $70.2 billion). Around it has grown up a little-attended-to homeland security complex with its own interests, businesses, associations, and lobbyists (including jostling crowds of ex-politicians and ex-government bureaucrats). As a result, more than eight years after 9/11, an amorphous state of mind has manifested itself in the actual state as a kind of Fear Inc. A number of factors have clearly gone into the creation of Fear Inc. and now insure that fear is the drug constantly shot into the American body politic." (Click here for the whole piece.)
Click here for Roy Orbison’s magnificent “Running Scared”
The secret word is Craven
“For two decades and counting, we citizens of the land of the free and the home of the brave have happily traded freedom for every scrap of bogus safety dangled before us. Indeed, we have devoted prodigious energy to inventing threats that demand the sacrifice of liberty, privacy and even basic human dignity. Blowing threats out of proportion is, of course, the stock in trade of TV news, whether the menace in question is a summer rainstorm or the distressing stains revealed when an investigative reporter shines ultraviolet light on a freshly laundered bed sheet at an upscale hotel. But television reflects its viewers' attitudes as well as shaping them, and clearly there exists a very large audience receptive to the never-ending theme: Life is meant, ever and always, to be safe--and you're not safe.” (Click here for the whole piece.)
Don’t get me wrong. I’m no hero. I’d have split from the Alamo on the second day after Santa Anna showed up. I have few pretentions to actual courage, but I do play the odds. I work on the principle that the chances are good I will come out of any given situation intact, but if, on the other hand, destiny has my number that’s just too bad. If I didn’t adopt this attitude of fatalism, it would be close impossible ever to step into an elevator, fly in a plane, ride in a car, ingest a narcotic, or chance a sexual encounter. Riding a motorcycle or walking in the inner city? Forget about it. I also do my level best not to have the posture of the victim. One does not want to be the limping gazelle on the outer edge of the herd when the hyenas are looking for lunch. What I don’t do is to place the slightest trust in cringing politicians (who tend to scurry to some bomb-proof bunker at the first sign of trouble), fascist officials, computer lists, or onerous and unworkable security systems to keep me from harm. I also don’t want to treat every swarthy male as a suspect and potential candidate for torture. I do note, however, how the last two wanna-be terror bombers on commercial airliners were, in fact, overcome by their plenty brave fellow passengers with no help from any professional security until the plane landed. Could it be that much of this fear is in the imagination of the media, or confined to the worshippers of Glenn Beck. In the same time that I found the Jack Gordon quote, this piece by Tom Engelhardt appeared on Common Dreams…
“The fear of terrorism has, by now, been institutionalized in our society -- quite literally so -- even if the thing we're afraid of has, on the scale of human problems, something of the will o' the wisp about it. For those who remember their Cold War fiction, it's more specter than SPECTRE. That fear has been embedded in what once was an un-American word, more easily associated with Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany: "homeland." It has replaced "country," "land," and "nation" in the language of the terror-mongers. "The homeland" is the place which terrorism, and nothing but terrorism, can violate. In 2002, that terror-embedded word got its own official government agency: the Department of Homeland Security, our second "defense" department, which has a 2010 budget of $39.4 billion (while overall "homeland security" spending in the 2010 budget reached $70.2 billion). Around it has grown up a little-attended-to homeland security complex with its own interests, businesses, associations, and lobbyists (including jostling crowds of ex-politicians and ex-government bureaucrats). As a result, more than eight years after 9/11, an amorphous state of mind has manifested itself in the actual state as a kind of Fear Inc. A number of factors have clearly gone into the creation of Fear Inc. and now insure that fear is the drug constantly shot into the American body politic." (Click here for the whole piece.)
Click here for Roy Orbison’s magnificent “Running Scared”
The secret word is Craven
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7 comments:
Do you really know anyone who is scared of terrorism?That's the myth. Passive, can't give a shit who rules if I have my ipod - a million
But I quake in my boots at the the whole bunch of psychopaths and pimps running Fear Inc.
PS Evil Golf balls quote was New Scientist, not me. I said: don't trust the sheep.
We never trust the sheep.
Forget terrorism. I know assholes who are scared of cigarette smoke.
The UK has just closed down its Swine Flu hotline as the "pandemic" warnings were overstated and it didnt happen.
I've often thought the fear mongering that's fed to us is, in reality, a reflection of the power elite's anxiety. A rush and a push and the land is ours. That's why they need phony rebels like Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann to keep us confused and divided.
Fear & Loathing eh?
Where is the good Doctor when we need him?
All is forgiven Hunter. Come back & save us from the Scum!!!
i also like to eat sheeple for lunch just so i don't have to deal any more of them.
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