Saturday, January 9, 2010

Politics of Fear

I'm not going to spend too much time on this, because the idiocy of the comments are completely self-evident. Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani publicly stated on GMA that the US had "no domestic terror attacks" under Bush. Click the link if you need more info.

Now, do you honestly believe a man like Giuliani forgot the 9/11 attacks or the fact that Bush had been in office 8 months? Do you think he forgot the shoe bomber attempt in December of that same year? No, he didn't. He's perpetuating the same kind of attack that the Republican party has for years. You make unsubstantiated claims that rouse the fear response in humans and motivate them to act irrationally. We as humans do, in fact, often act ridiculously when we're afraid. We often do things that are not in our best interest.

This is a plain and simple attempt to manipulate people. If it was a one time event, I could accept that he misspoke, but the entire Republican party campaigns on these terror tactics rather than actual solutions to problems. For example, Republicans totally attacked Obama for waiting three days to address the attempted terrorist attack on the plane heading into Detroit. Funny, when the shoe bomber attempted his attack, Bush waited six ... but, no one attacked him for that. Personally, I don't mind having a thoughtful president for once - and, one that acts faster than Bush.

Here's the real problem I have with the Republican party right now - the absolutely ridiculous hypocrisy they're engaging in. They want more government and less government simultaneously. The government should protect us from attack, but not regulate weapons. Government should tell women what to do with their bodies, but should stay out personal affairs. Government should control who can and can't marry, but government has no place in trying to keep it's people happy.

Instead of trying to legislate morality (impossible) or motivate through fear (deadly), the Republican party should start focusing on actual solutions to problems rather than trying to create new ones just to get elected. Rant done.

As disclosure, I'm a registered Republican and currently embarrassed by it.

Regarding my writing, I'm probably going to submit my short story this weekend, even though the date has been pushed to Feb. 28. It's just hard to start on something new while dealing with the old. I am going to submit my screenplay to one last contest; that will leave it sitting in two until summer. If I can make semi-finalists on those, I think I'd be able to make a good case to an agent to get representation. Well, that's my hope anyway.

As far as my next book, I had a sudden epiphany last night: the arrival of a new character. He's really what I needed to balance out the book, even though it gives me a really big cast. Basically, I'll have these 4 different groups/teams/individuals coming to the realization that there is a problem and working towards the nexus of the issue until they start to interact. It's almost like a survey approach to this world I'm creating. The reader will get to see a lot of different perspectives in a single book. If it works well, there could be literally four different series spinning off.

1 comment:

  1. I've headed more and more towards libertarianism. You might like it. People think they're crazy, but really, some of their opinions of things make sense. I'm tired of the two-party system and I'm tired of voting for "The lesser of two evils" especially since I recently started talking to friends/family about politics and almost everyone I know has libertarian viewpoints but voted Republican because they would have felt like they were "throwing their vote away." Really though, if you're not voting for what you believe in, isn't that also throwing your vote away?

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