The hallmark of the Far Right since 9/11 has been the wanton exploitation of fear to manipulate citizenry. Make people fearful enough and they will become timid, complacent, malleable.
George w. Bush used fear against his own people to manipulate them into supporting his war of whim against Iraq. He used fear to intimidate them into surrendering their civil liberties. He used fear to quell protests against his diabolical deeds in his illusory war on terror.
Harpo too has used fear as a weapon against the Canadian people and he's poised to unleash this vile weapon on us again. It's already been reported that enviromin Baird is crafting a set of greenhouse gas measures that are designed to cause us to recoil in fear and lose our will to combat global warming.
Using fear against your own people is pure treachery but the Far Right shows no sign of giving up this tried and true technique. No matter how badly discredited George Bush has become among the American people, those who aspire to succeed him can't restrain themselves from following in his despicable footsteps. Fareed Zakaria describes how the Republican frontrunners are at it again:
"More troubling than any of Bush's rhetoric is that of the Republicans who wish to succeed him. 'They hate you!' says Rudy Giuliani in his new role as fearmonger in chief, relentlessly reminding audiences of all the nasty people out there. 'They don't want you to be in this college!' he recently warned an audience at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. 'Or you, or you, or you,' he said, reportedly jabbing his finger at students. In the first Republican debate he warned, 'We are facing an enemy that is planning all over this world, and it turns out planning inside our country, to come here and kill us.' On the campaign trail, Giuliani plays a man exasperated by the inability of Americans to see the danger staring them in the face. 'This is reality, ma'am,' he told a startled woman at Oglethorpe. 'You've got to clear your head.'
"...The presidential campaign could have provided the opportunity for a national discussion of the new world we live in. So far, on the Republican side, it has turned into an exercise in chest-thumping. Whipping up hysteria requires magnifying the foe. The enemy is vast, global and relentless. Giuliani casually lumps together Iran and Al Qaeda. Mitt Romney goes further, banding together all the supposed bad guys. 'This is about Shia and Sunni. This is about Hizbullah and Hamas and Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood,' he recently declared.
"...The competition to be the tough guy is producing new policy ideas, all right—ones that range from bad to insane. Romney, who bills himself as the smart, worldly manager, recently explained that while 'some people have said we ought to close Guantánamo, my view is we ought to double [the size of] Guantánamo.' In fact, Romney should recognize that Guantánamo does not face space constraints. The reason that President Bush wants to close it down—and it is he who has expressed that desire—is that it is an unworkable legal mess with enormous strategic, political and moral costs. In a real war you hold prisoners of war until the end of hostilities. When does that happen in the war on terror? Does Romney propose that the United States keep an ever-growing population of suspects in jail indefinitely without trials as part of a new American system of justice?
"In 2005 Romney said, 'How about people who are in settings—mosques, for instance—that may be teaching doctrines of hate and terror? Are we monitoring that? Are we wiretapping?' This proposal is mild compared with what Rep. Tom Tancredo suggested the same year. When asked about a possible nuclear strike by Islamic radicals on the United States, he suggested that the U.S. military threaten to 'take out' Mecca."
Zakaria warns that America cannot regain its place in the world so long as its people succumb to the climate of fear so disgracefully exploited by its leaders. It's an excellent article and you can find it here:
America may not be able to break out of the claws of fear by which its leaders have grasped its throat but that's not to say that we in Canada must tolerate this sort of treachery from our own leaders, the Harpers, the Bairds and the Hilliers. It's time to stand up to them and let them know we won't tolerate this nonsense any longer.
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