Thread: Politics of fear

Originally Posted by Red_Lizard2

not saying it isn't pork filled because it is, but not like the current republican party didn't like pork when they had power. Both sides want money for their shit that they like.

Agreed. I think it's a travesty that either party would use tactics of fear to pass a bill that doesn't create nearly as many jobs as it should (to actually do what the bill is meant to do, stimulate). This bill is basically a democrat wishlist of things they been wanting to spend money on...now they have a platform to pass it with, economic crisis....Republicans did it too......I still say that we (the consumers) know how to spend our money best, so cut taxes across the board, let us have more of our own money, and let us spend it how we want.

Basically what these stimulus packages are saying is this...."We know how to spend your money better than you do." Which simply isn't true.

If anybody is interested, there is a great book dealing with the politics of fear.

The aptly named, "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton takes a wonderfully in depth look on the subject matter. For example, Crichton tackles the issue of 'Global Warming' and the facts and fictions about the subject. Also in particular is the issue of where we get our information, and who should be held accountable for the lack of information, or, more importantly, the fundamentally incorrect information.

We are at a point in our Nation's evolution in which the gap between the classes has become a focused obsession in our current media stream. The pundits are "looking out for you, the people". And there is a substantial group of these "people" who are all too eager to suck at the teat of mediocrity: whose mother preys on the illusion of unbiased information, while stuffing these "people's" gullets with pseudo intellectual semi-truths and cleverly designed Power-Point presentations. The major news networks - CBS, NBC, FOX, BBC, etc - have taken it upon themselves to convince their susceptible, lazy audiences that there is no need for further research: everything they want you to know is right there, invading your home every time you sit back to watch O'Reilly or Keith Olberman or Nancy Grace tell us the real truth about the United States.

And foolishly the "people" decide to go this road. Questioning our sources of information has gotten so much easier, and yet nothing is ever checked and nobody is seriously held accountable. Find out who's writing your news; but more importantly, find out who is paying the people who write your news. Perhaps when the issue comes to a boil; when the fundamental questions - "Who puts this information together? And where do they get it?" - are answered, then perhaps we may be looking towards a legitimately brighter future.

My apologies for the rant: it's been a long day amongst truly naive students at school: students who are so blinded by their obsession for political correctness and treating everyone with "fairness" that I had to go somewhere and vent. So what better place then an online forum for gaming?

Anyways, the real point of the message: read the book "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton. And then check out the sources within the book: the bibliography is fantastic.

Harvey Birdman :9

Originally Posted by Muqtar SGT_Clintok

Are there independant economists saying that this spending bill is necssary to save our economy and that we may not recover if it isn't passed? Is there anything other than Obama demanding that this pork infested, election payback, left winger wish list be passed or we are all doomed?

Motoz, regardless of which subjects you agree with, I think the message during the campaign was that Obama was a change from the politics of fear, and here he is blatantly employing the tactic 2 weeks after he starts.

I'll work with the question as you asked it. I don't like the bias in it but I can't change how you write. Here goes.

First, are there any independent economists that back Obama's plan, aka The American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan (ARRP)? I'm not going to scour the world's libraries to see if there are any independent economists that agree with ARRP. What I will do is offer evidence that whenever governmental policy questions are debated there will be independent economists that are for and against a particular plan. Same is undoubtedly true with ARRP.

Here is a link to a debate page from The Economist magazine. It shows that in various topics economists are divided as to whether a particular regulatory scheme will work or not. Unfortunately they haven't debated ARRP yet. You and I can watch together if and when they do and see where the majority (not any) of independent economists put their bets.

http://www.economist.com/debate/archive

The second part of the same question is does Obama's economic advisor think that the ARRP is necessary to reduce economic troubles and if so, does he have an air of independent or bipartisan thinking? Barack Obama's economic advisor is Larry Summers and yes, he is in favor of the ARRP. That's probably no surprise to either of us.

http://economistsview.typepad.com/ec...erican-re.html

The issue then is the second half of the question. Is Larry Summers trustworthy as an independent thinker? Based on what I've read in the following Wiki bio, Larry Summers has been associated with Democratic presidents, but he has also worked with Alan Greenspan who is a noted Republican. The article also hints that Larry Summers is an opinionated dickwad. His independence is therefore plausible, but his open-mindedness is questionable IMO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers

With that history it appears that 1) statisticly speaking there a number of indepenent economists that would be pro-ARRP and 2) Obama has received advice from an apparently independent but egotistical and dicky economist that ARRP is necessary to avoid or reduce a financial calamity.

So as I see it Obama is still reporting what his expert is telling him and not employing fear tactics. Whether Obama's expert is scaring him I don't know, but being a fellow lawyer I would guess that Obama doesn't scare easy and believes what he is saying. ::shrug::

Originally Posted by harvey birdman

If anybody is interested, there is a great book dealing with the politics of fear.

The aptly named, "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton takes a wonderfully in depth look on the subject matter. For example, Crichton tackles the issue of 'Global Warming' and the facts and fictions about the subject. Also in particular is the issue of where we get our information, and who should be held accountable for the lack of information, or, more importantly, the fundamentally incorrect information.

We are at a point in our Nation's evolution in which the gap between the classes has become a focused obsession in our current media stream. The pundits are "looking out for you, the people". And there is a substantial group of these "people" who are all too eager to suck at the teat of mediocrity: whose mother preys on the illusion of unbiased information, while stuffing these "people's" gullets with pseudo intellectual semi-truths and cleverly designed Power-Point presentations. The major news networks - CBS, NBC, FOX, BBC, etc - have taken it upon themselves to convince their susceptible, lazy audiences that there is no need for further research: everything they want you to know is right there, invading your home every time you sit back to watch O'Reilly or Keith Olberman or Nancy Grace tell us the real truth about the United States.

And foolishly the "people" decide to go this road. Questioning our sources of information has gotten so much easier, and yet nothing is ever checked and nobody is seriously held accountable. Find out who's writing your news; but more importantly, find out who is paying the people who write your news. Perhaps when the issue comes to a boil; when the fundamental questions - "Who puts this information together? And where do they get it?" - are answered, then perhaps we may be looking towards a legitimately brighter future.

My apologies for the rant: it's been a long day amongst truly naive students at school: students who are so blinded by their obsession for political correctness and treating everyone with "fairness" that I had to go somewhere and vent. So what better place then an online forum for gaming?

Anyways, the real point of the message: read the book "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton. And then check out the sources within the book: the bibliography is fantastic.

Harvey Birdman :9

Harvey,

Thanks for writing. That's an interesting piece. Coincidentally The Economist is currently having a debate on mass intelligence.

http://www.economist.com/debate/archive

Badass. The debate mentions video games. Here is the debate question:

In an age of music videos and video games, of instant gratification and attention deficit disorder, it is easy to assume there is less appetite for high culture today than ever before. Yet museums, opera houses and other bastions of traditional culture report an explosion of consumption. As our universities mint increasing numbers of graduates, is the public truly getting smarter, or are we simply snacking on the sophisticated stuff while feasting on junk?

Yah know in "The Dark Knight" where Bruce gives Lucius the power to see anything in the whole city? And Lucius says "This is too much power for one man." Yeah, that's basically my thinking on "mass intelligence" or anything that could result in less privacy for us.

Fear is the selling point of humanity. If you can tell people that something bad will happen unless _____ they will usually do it. Humans are easy to manipulate through fear.

Originally Posted by asianator365

Yah know in "The Dark Knight" where Bruce gives Lucius the power to see anything in the whole city? And Lucius says "This is too much power for one man." Yeah, that's basically my thinking on "mass intelligence" or anything that could result in less privacy for us.

Asian,

In all due respect, they're not debating spying. What they are debating is whether you, me, Muqtar, all of TTP, all of society, are more or less in tune with reality given the amount of information that is on our plates.

Queue sheepdog story 3...2...1...go:

They are debating whether we are becoming more like sheepdogs or more like sheep.