[Peace-discuss] Futility of 'truth' searches-I Meant Geraniums

[Ken Urban]

This was the thing that stood out for me at the 'town-hall' meeting on
te Patriot Act.  The police office and 'organizer of the prowar
movement' were of comlpete agreement that the ARE sleeper cells with in
the US poised to strike.  It's not a question of IF, but a questin of
WHEN.  Something larger that 9-11 is GOING to happen.   

I had never know the level of fear of war (or more likely, moslems)
that is out there.  I can see this fear in my neighbors (90+, never
leave the house), when a black salesman came to the door, they called
the cops.  Same thing happened where we used to live. 

I can see that the media causes and promotes this.  When I lived in
NYC, there were murders on the news everyday ... but 'ordinary murders'
wouldn't make the news, it had to be especially tragic ... a baby held
in her mother's arm's shot by a stray bullet, the Central Park jogger,
etc. Upon moving to Champaign and viewing the local murders (Subway,
Campus Town Rape/Murder, Police killing a homeless man, Feinburg,
Bouncers beating someone to death)  I find that there is little to fear
and murder is less arbitrary, and most murders are 'crimes of passion'
or murders by authority figures.

How can we address this unreasonable fear that's been created by the
media?  

700,000 people a year die in cars.  Why can drunk drivers become
presidents and senators?

I can't even fathom the death toll from McDonalds and the 'standard
american diet' that causes heart disease, atherosclerosis, diabetes,
etc.

Smoking?

Thoughts on the issue are very welcome.

Ken

>>> parenti susan rose <sparenti at ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> 07/10/03 03:52PM
>>>
My two cents: as long as the language of the Bush group constantly
affirms: WE ARE UNDER ATTACK, then Bush and company can switch story
lines
and explanations and have us hunt for
Osama Bin Hussein WMD the Third, and people will accept all these
twists
and turns, however inconsistent they may be. The message is FEAR, and
careful logic and consistency is unnecessary, with that message.
People are not thinking. To notice inconsistent reasoning requires
thinking. People are fearing, big time.

The strategy of 'strike first, qualify the reasons later' is the one
the
Bush PR is using--successfully, it seems to me.

Even the current observation amongst many Americans that there is a
recession, reaffirms FEAR. It doesn't lead people to necessarily want
to
vote out Bush.

Fear has its own logic, its own underground life(ask people who have
panic attacks about this). A panic over one's partner's bad health can
lead one to feel that terrorists are all over---one fear supports
another. WHAT is feared, doesn't have to connect.

If the present attempt to show how Bush lied can be a louder message
than
FEAR, va bene. But that would require thinking observers.We don't have
that.

In traveling around, I keep hearing from people I respect(Jim
Hightower,
Francis Moore Lappe) that we have to elicit another emotional base
from
people than fear, otherwsie we're inadvertently beating the same drum
as the people we oppose.

Wilhelm Reich asserted that an explanation/analysis must also show a
way
OUT of the problem it is explaining/analyzing, for it to be valid for
him.
The analysis I've just given doesn't show a way out, so I'm
temporarily
disapproving of myself.

But I do feel that a 'hunt for TRUTH' is futile in the current
fearful,
non-thinking environment, and is only fodder for media blabber. We
know
Bush lied, but truth doesn't matter---only what's said matters to
non-thinking people--and people who don't think are ruled by language.
My friend Herbert Brun, who would have been 85 yesterday, said that.
He also said, "Things are what's said about them, in the social world"
but that takes thinking to understand.

We have to be smarter than the people we oppose, not just more honest
and good. Media is winning, and not because it tells the truth.
That needs to be our point of departure, not the futile
emphasis on truth.

Susan
Thu, 10 Jul 2003, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> This is an excellent point.  It's easier to see now that the whole
> imminent threat scenario that the administration presented was a
conscious
> lie, and that Bush, Blair & Co. (including our congressional
> representatives) have the blood of thousands on their hands.
>
>
> On Thu, 10 Jul 2003, Chas. 'Mark' Bee wrote:
>
> > Ken Urban wrote:
> >
> > >I hear the discourse changing from _having_ WMDs to _programs_ for
WMDs.
> > > Soon it'll switch to _would like to have_ WMDs or _dreamt about_
WMDs.
> > >
> > >I thought I heard some silly gov't offical (or news lacky) say
that
> > >Iraq hid/destroyed their WMDs right before the attack.
> > >
> >     Actually, that might have happened, even *during* the attack,
to
> > whatever remnants they might still have had.  Of course, if true,
it
> > wouldn't support BushCo's lies, but squander-the-troopsers all
across
> > the country would crow like roosters that it did just that.
> >
> >     This is one of the PR 'nightmare scenarios' that could result
from
> > acting like Iraq had absolutely no WMDs.  They had to have had
> > something or other sitting around from the Reaganauts, unless they
are
> > more efficient than our government is, which seems unlikely.
> > Eventually - however small - it will turn up, which is why
'imminent
> > threat' needs to be made the test against which finds are measured
in
> > the public eye, instead of 'no WMDs'.
> >
> >     Cries of "Iraq had no WMDs" need to sooner or later be changed
to
> > "Iraq couldn't use WMDs" if this is a PR battle we want to stay
won.
> > Bad drives out good, especially in the realm of public opinion.
> >
> >     Just my 1 cent, back to lurker mode...
> >
>
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