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Originally Posted by Pleasurepays
"our fear"?
or
"your fear"?
my fear is people like you making blanket statements to mischaracterize the attitudes and feelings of 300,000,000 people to affirm your own feelings and rationalize them.
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blanket statements are always a danger. That being said, it is hard to deny the effect of fear on a populace.
In the doc "Manufacturing Consent" there is an awesome discussion about how leaders always do what they want.
But in a democracy, they don't have the luxery of acting at will (like a dictatorship, monarchy, etc.). Instead they have to
maufacture consent.
It has calmed slightly, but our leaders were so good at this that questioning the path towards war in Iraq (with untold financial rewards for many close to those leading) was considered mild treason. Fear works.