Government & Fear

[yondermtn]

I found this interesting

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... ef=opinion

[Amskeptic]

I found this interesting

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... ef=opinion

Very excellent.
Colin

[TrollFromDownBelow]

I'm gonna play devil's advocate here - In general, I agree with his thesis statement ...and I fiercely hold/guard my privacy and freedom.

But need to poke some holes in some of his arguments.

First, the color coded threat meter - I have been traveling frequently via the air (at least 1x a month) since 2004... the threat meter was typically at "yellow" not bouncing between "orange and red" as the author suggests. Picking nits? Fair enough - let's get below the surface.

Do I feel 'threatened' by the TSA? Better yet, do I feel they are 'invading my privacy' by scanning my luggage and myself? Um, no. Doesn't bother me in the bit, why do i need a 9 inch hunting knife in my carry on luggage anyways? If I need to I can check it in. The airways has been used (or attempted) on numerous occasions - it is a weak link that needs to be guarded.

And as far as the media dialectic - ie why don't we focus our efforts on work place deaths which are far more prevalent than deaths caused on US soil from terrorist attacks...excuse me, but isn't that OUR job as citizens to point this out and make noise about it? If there were demonstrations in the streets about work place deaths from greedy corporations I think people would pay attention. My point is since we have a free press (although some may debate this point) we can capture both the press's and our ELECTED gov't officials attention to the situation.

Just some food for thought - how would you strengthen his argument - b/c I found it weak - I agree with his thesis and conclusion, but his build up arguments are weak.

[Amskeptic]

I'm gonna play devil's advocate here - since 2004... the threat meter was typically at "yellow" not bouncing between "orange and red" as the author suggests.

It *did* tick up towards red near elections.

Do I feel 'threatened' by the TSA? Better yet, do I feel they are 'invading my privacy' by scanning my luggage and myself? Um, no.

But as always, goofballs at the screening areas with no sense of discretion or discernment managed to generate sensational violations of Americans' right to privacy at check-in. We are not stupid. We can see that a frightened child does not need to be virtually stripped searched AND patted down, Ted Kennedy really was Ted Kennedy, and getting a little too friskily felt up by roving hands is not cool. I think most of us are willing to subject ourselves to a proper high tech scan of our persons and belongings for the security of feeling like we might make it to our destinations.
Colin

[TrollFromDownBelow]

I honestly don't remember a 'red' when I was going through the airports - I'm sure it did; just don't recall it...remember a lot of yellow and an occasional orange. And I'm sure/know that there have been TSA agents that have taken things too far in their searches....just saying the nearly 400 times I've been through an airport (minimum 4 airport visits a month times 8 years) they've always been professional.

What I'd like to see is for folks to chime in as to how to STRENGTHEN his argument - if we were to have collectively written his article, what could we have added to it to make it stronger?

[Amskeptic]

I honestly don't remember a 'red' when I was going through the airports - I'm sure it did; just don't recall it...remember a lot of yellow and an occasional orange. And I'm sure/know that there have been TSA agents that have taken things too far in their searches....just saying the nearly 400 times I've been through an airport (minimum 4 airport visits a month times 8 years) they've always been professional.

What I'd like to see is for folks to chime in as to how to STRENGTHEN his argument - if we were to have collectively written his article, what could we have added to it to make it stronger?

You are not a member of the "profiled" group. That may make your airport visits more "pleasant". I don't think we had red alerts but once.

Here is the concluding paragraph

Yet ultimately we are not powerless. We can resist the impulse to be afraid. We may not at the moment have answers to the very real dangers that we face in this world, but we can begin to identify those dangers and seek solutions once we overcome our fear. Or as Bertrand Russell rather more elegantly put it, as World War II was drawing to a close, “to conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”

Strengthen his argument, or augment his argument?

We live in a false paranoid world brought to us by own actions. If we would like to be less afraid, perhaps we could be less aggressive. I don't see anyone in our leadership and very very few people in our society showing the least bit of concern that we just killed tens of thousands of human beings in a faraway land, Hell, you think a terrorist comes from a truly loving family with a bright future? I don't think so. The "Black Widows" circling Sochi are human beings who feel like they have nothing left to live for. Like we don't know what causes suicidal pain? We allow the danger, we foment the danger, we are not in a true fear, we are in a manipulated fear.

Same difference with crime and "thugs". We create false fear of each other. We do not seem to allow that crime has seriously dropped in this country.

We pretend to be afraid of our political opposition. I hear those bloviating idiots in the conservative talk radio universe blather about how this President "has to be stopped", how he is a dictator and is stomping all over the Constitution because he stated that *if* Congress refuses to act, he will within his authority start issuing executive orders. That dangerous talk in the conservative bubble is completely untenable and false. The fact is Obama has issued fewer executive orders than *any* President since Grover Cleveland, but the conservatives are playing upon fears this moment, fears that flourish in the ignorance of the American citizen who brays all the asinine talking points spewing out of the Koch Brothers think tanks that we have a "liberal" media when in fact it is but corporate-profit-driven entertainment these days. Fear breeds in ignorance. Fear is whipped up when we can't discuss rationally any more because the arguments are continually dragged into the gutter of idiocy by those intellectually bankrupt morally challenged lazy self-satisfied defenders of the status quo who have no interest in other people.

“People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they have not communicated with each other.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

What about the linked article needs to be strengthened? I don't get it.
Colin

[TrollFromDownBelow]

I agreed with everything you wrote, but this last line....

What about the linked article needs to be strengthened? I don't get it.
Colin

Error number 1, and I get that this is superficial, but need to point it out:

"during the George W. Bush administration we were treated to the color-coded terror threat meter. It was presented as a way to keep us secure, but constantly wavering between orange and red,"

Like I said - I went through airports at least 400 times, and don't recall a red (maybe once?). You say I don't fit the profile? Come see me with a full on beard; I had one during the 9/11 attack; received many more disdainful looks from cashiers than I did from security (this was before TSA). But again; as stated earlier, I'm not saying the TSA is angelic; I'm sure there have been abuses. It's just been my experience that they have been professional both with myself and the folks in the general vicinity of me in the security line.

If his thesis is about how gov'ts use fear, then I don't see how the below applies to his argument:

"But the problem is not limited to workplace deaths. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. estimates another 50,000 die every year from occupational diseases. And none of this accounts for the thousands of workers who are permanently disabled each year.

In total, 54,000 Americans die every year due to work-related illnesses and accidents. This is the equivalent of 148 deaths each day; in terms of fatalities it is roughly a Boston Marathon bombing every half hour of every day."

This is more about what the media reports on, and more importantly (sadly?) what we, Americans pay attention to. If it is the unnecessary loss of life that grabs our attention, we, the citizens of the U.S. should be marching in the street about it. But we choose not to. My point is, is he spends a decent amount of time talking about work place deaths, etc, but this does very little to strengthen his argument about government and fear. As you stated, the media is about profits and entertainment .... this does nothing to strengthen his argument about linking gov't and fear.


I give him a A for his thesis, and a B- for his supporting arguments, as some things aren't correct, and others don't really add any strength to his thesis.

My whole point is ... if we want to convince others, or maybe just make people think a little bit harder about where they stand, you need to make strong arguments. We need to be critical of articles/blogs/ etc both for and against the view point we believe in. Must think of everything with an eye to the Socratic Method; especially those documents that we do agree with.

It's very easy to say "Yeah, I get it!" "How come folks on the other side of the fence don't see what I am seeing?" Much more difficult to look at something you do agree with, with critical eyes and look for the wholes and gaps.

Cheers,
Mike

[Amskeptic]

I agreed with everything you wrote, but this last line....

What about the linked article needs to be strengthened? I don't get it.
Colin

If his thesis is about how gov'ts use fear, then I don't see how the below applies to his argument:

"But the problem is not limited to workplace deaths. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. estimates another 50,000 die every year from occupational diseases. And none of this accounts for the thousands of workers who are permanently disabled each year."

Ah yes, an exploding thesis . . . . got it. Perhaps his example of work place deaths was in service of declaring that we sure do get excited about deaths caused by people outside of our borders but seem to cast a blind eye to the carnage we generate amongst ourselves each and every day? That if we spend a trillion dollars to avenge 2990 lives at World Trade Center, perhaps we could spend a bit to reduce the TEN 9/11s every year from car accidents or gun deaths? That we use fear to unleash the dollars in the former example? Whaddyathink? I don't know.
Colin

[Spezialist]

Mr Russell is very smart, and what he said at the time was for that time.
I just can't stand media writers using the past as a justification for fear now.
I have a rule, if the media is making me angry or fearful, I turn it off.
Coming from a Hopi Tribal Ancestry I know first hand the momentum of culture that literally kills culture in the name of profit.