CrimsonMagician Esquire wrote:
I'm so done with this. Once again you are contradicting yourself. On the one hand you are saying that the "conspiracy" or "biased" content of the article to create fear, therefore keeping voters from going to the polls is a tin hat argument. The you come back with your own "conspiracy" or "biased" view saying that the article was written to give the slant that it's trying to make it seem as if the Bush Administration should be feared.
Once again we are in the same place.
You never answered my question in the very beginning on whether or not fear can be used as an instrument of control, and it's gone downhill ever since. You continue to pull stuff out of your *** and argue something that was never up for debate in the beginning. Good day to you.
Sigh. Whatever. Here. I'll answer your question. Of course fear can be used as an instrument of control. The point I'm making is what kind of fear we are subjected to, and how reasonable the fear is.
Let's examine the "fear" imparted by mentioning a possible terrorist attack on or near the elections. Sure. You can certainly argue that by making that statement, the administration is trying to increase awareness of the terrorist threat and therefore make people think: Bush=="fighting terrorist", so if there's danger of terrorism, we should all vote Bush.
I can see that. However, the potential of a terrorist threat *is* in fact very real. I seem to recall planes being flown into very tall buildings just a few years ago. Was that "real"? I seem to recall that bin Laden is still at large. Is that "real"? I seem to recall that just a coupld months ago, there was a series of terrorist attacks during the Spansih elections. Was that "real"?
Your cynicism is overcoming your common sense in this case. Whether the "threat" of terroism helps the Bush campaign or not is just one thing. The other is that the threat is real.
The really funny bit is that if you believe that more people think Bush is "tough on terror" in contrast to Kerry (which is the only reason you'd think that terrorist warnings would help Bush after all, right?), then you are essentially insisting that the administration should *lie* to the people about the risk of terroristm so that Kerry has a better chance of winning the election.
Is that actually what you are arguing? Because from where I'm sitting, that's the only thing that jibes with your argumets so far.
Ok. That's issue number one (how many times do I have to show you how the two are different?). The other is this article today. Can we both agree that the point of this article is to raise concerns among the readers that the Bush administration may be using the threat of terrorism to his advantage in the election?
If so, one could argue that this is no worse then the warnings of terrorism in the first place. Except for one thing: The danger of a terrorist attack is *very* real. We've been attacked. We've struck back. There are currently a whole bunch of terrorist organizations who would like nothing more then to hit us. The actions in Spain suggest a pattern of attacking during elections. It's all quite reasonable to caution people about the threat. On the other side, there is *zero* reason to expect or believe that anyone's planning to use a delay to sway the votes in some way. It's pure speculation and paranoia. We can list off reasons and recent history to judge the likelyhood of a terrorist attack. We can't do the same with a rigged election. There's just no justification to make the claim.
And that's the point. One is a reasonable assessment of the possibility of terrorist attack. The other is a groundless implication of wrongdoing. And you, my friend, are arguing the side of the groundless implication.
You know. Not everthing the Bush administration does is about winning the next election. They also have a country to run. And part of that work is about doing things like warning the public of potential dangers. You're reading waaaay too much into things if you think those warnings are just about trying to gain advantage in the election. Um. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar...