by Klaus Rohrich
Monday, October 25, 2004
In 1972 Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, self-professed 'gonzo journalist', wrote a book entitled Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. The book basically was a prcis of what it felt like to be involved in a presidential election and was met with rave reviews.
What's interesting is how the concept of 'fear and loathing' has embedded itself in the psyche of the Democratic Party to the point where all they seem to be able to do is squawk about how the sky is falling and only their candidate can save the day. Remember Hillary Clinton's warning about the 'vast right-wing conspiracy' out to get her husband during the Monicagate imbroglio? She was using fear to attempt to sway the american people to back off attempting to get at the bottom of Bill Clinton's crimes and misdemeanors.
Today the Democratic Party and its fellow traveler liberal media is sounding the alarm about all the horrible things that will happen if Bush is re-elected.
Here's a sampling of some of the kind things that are being said:
"The entire federal government- the Congress, the executive, the courts- is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush believes he now has a mandate. That mandate includes the power of the state to force pregnant women to surrender control over their own lives. It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich. It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable. and it includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine."
-Bill Moyer on National Public Radio
New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman is equally hysterical about the so-called right-wing conspiracy currently being played out in the U.S. Krugman claims that this conspiracy has been ongoing since the days of Barry Goldwater (40 years!) and has to do with turning the clock back on civil rights. He's calling for the unearthing of an enormous scandal to put the Republicans out of commission once and for all. Does this sound like a sane, rational human being or are these the ravings of a deranged intellect?
If that isn't enough, the Democrats are stooping so low as to use the deaths of incurably ill individuals to exploit their own causes. In a recent speech at a political rally, John Edwards, the vice-presidential candidate, used the death of actor Christopher Reeve to attempt to scare voters into voting Democrat. "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again." The implication being that because George Bush is against stem cell research using fetal tissue, paralyzed people will remain so unless Kerry becomes president. I'm surprised that he didn't say they could raise the dead!
While the Democrats attempt to portray themselves as "The Party of Hope", little that they do or say would support that position. The number of examples is too many to cite, but suffice it to say they are mind-boggling. The Hollywood elite is leading the charge in creating an atmosphere of fear designed to vilify the Republicans. People like Barbra Streisand, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins all invoke the specter of the end of days if Bush is re-elected. Rosie Perez claims "I'm f…king scared out of my pants right now, and if you're not, wake up" as she prepared to join an anti-Bush demonstration in New York. The diminutive Rosie never bothered to explain exactly what was scaring her in specific terms, but it had to do with Bush getting re-elected.
Not to be outdone by the media and Hollywood, Democrat film makers and playwrights are equally committed to scaring their audience with absurdist visions of the sky falling onto chickens without heads. We've talked about Michael Moore ad nauseum, so no more needs to be said. However, New York University professor Mark Crispin Miller is worth a peek. He recently wrote a play entitled Patriot act: a Public Meditation wherein boogeyman Bush is going to turn the United States into a Christian theocracy, complete with death penalties for adultery and pre-marital sex.
Other Democrats who have gone hysterical include James Carville and Ted Kennedy. according to Carville if the president is re-elected, then seniors will no longer be getting Social Security and school lunches will become a thing of the past. Besotted, fatuous Ted Kennedy is also selling fear by the bushel in an effort to portray Bush as the guy who is going to destroy america as we know it.
and finally the civil rights lobby, headed up by firebrand rabble-rouser al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson, who claim that Bush's re-election will mean the reversal of all the civil rights gains that have been made by african americans since 1960. This from a guy who accused four white law enforcement officers of raping a 15-year-old african american girl, despite knowing that the incident never happened and a guy who makes his money extorting money from corporations with threats of boycotts.
I'm thinking that maybe there's something in the water that's affecting the Democrats' ability to reason. Rather than look at the real reasons why they are losing elections (i.e. programs that are so wacky that few people can relate to them), they are trying to scare the electorate into voting against the Republicans because of some vague fear of what they might do. If that's the best reason that the Democratic Party can give voters, my guess is that they will be out of power for a long time.