My sister and I were talking the other day and it made me think about this term "fear-mongering" used by politicians to accuse one side or the other of putting unnecessary fear into the minds and hearts of the American people. And while this may be true it is not only true of Republicans or of Democrats it is true of scientists, doctors, media and any other of a million sources.
We as a society have become afraid of each other, afraid of toys, of food, of the rest of the world. New mothers have to fear everything from is my baby wearing the right diaper, playing with the right toy, sleeping in a safe room, with safe blankets and holy cow how are they suppose to sleep? Is it on their back, side or stomach this week?
We have to consciously wonder is it egg whites or yolks that I am suppose to stay away from? Did that movie or song create a demon in my child's head, will they grow up and open fire at their high school? Oh crap did I just board a plane with an Arab? Does my car have enough air bags and is that air bag in the door going to push the baby's car seat into the roof? Oh crap is that car seat suppose to face forward or backward?
Is the water safe to drink? Is the meat safe to eat? Is my child's teacher molesting them in the bathroom during recess or is it the minister at the church? Did that republican just say we should cut funding for public schools again? Did that democrat say we needed to develop a government agency to oversee that agency...what?
Damn it the stock market is crashing and well were at it so is that plane into a building. I can't pay my mortgage and my newspaper just went under so I have no idea what is going on...I would watch tv news to find out but my tv doesn't work anymore because the government was bored one day and decided tv needed to be better. Missed the boat on that one because yesterday my company shut its doors to move to some 3rd world country and I have no job to afford a better tv.
Oh well I guess I will just sit in the dark...cause the electricity prices are much to high and you have to be a millionaire to afford to run a light for an hour...due to the shortage. On the bright side I saw some jack ass driving past my house in a Hummer so things have to be getting better right?
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
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To put your whole...reflection into perspective, Pegs, it is not that these things haven't been happening since the beginning of man. In the sixties and seventies, it was the pot-smoking hippies, Nixon's eavesdropping, and another fucked-up war we had to worry about. In the forties and fifties, it was communist sympathisers, uppity niggers (by uppity I mean those who actually believed that they deserved to be treated as equal human beings. How dare they, right?), and McCarthy's witch hunts. In the thirties and forties, it was the Nazi's, Japs, and the Great Depression.
My point is, things have never changed. We are still a racist, war-mongering, paranoid society. The only thing that is different today is the twenty-four hour news cycle. They have to fill their time slots with material, so you get to hear about the dumbass in detroit who murdered his children and the woman in Florida who lost her job because she was a lesbian. We are having a hard time processing the amazing overload of information that we receive on a daily basis so we tend to see it as an ultimate degradation of society, when in fact things are really not much different than they have always been.
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